Unfortunately, while there are far fewer RAS's than TS's, some of them are pretty poor. The RAS also takes far more effort in setup and alignment. When moving my shop, it took about an hour to setup the TS, but most of a day for the RAS. OTOH, my particular RAS is stable and repeatable, and gets a lot of heavy use. As with the TS, there are methods and techniques, though they are less well known. For instance, a marker strip at the front table edge together with a pointer rod allows me to quickly swing the arm to any angle with nearly the same accuracy as my Incra on the TS, and is just as quick.
For crosscuts and dadoes on large projects, it's much faster, and some projects are nearly all done between the panel saw and RAS.
Still, it's not for everyone. Much more care is needed when ripping or molding, and if you don't have the right techniques, guides and holddowns in place, you shouldn't do it.
As for schredding your flesh if you're not watching carefully, I suggest that, if that's possible, then you're doing it wrong, with the RAS, TS or whatever. We've seen pictures of people cutting off fingers (or hands) with a RAS, but never why the hands were there in the first place. My same TS pushstick is used on the RAS, and my hands are far away. There's no more reason to have your hands near a RAS blade then to do the same on a TS.
As to the wobbling arm, I have to agree. Some are like that and, if you can't fix it, I wouldn't use it. Junk comes in all forms. And few people find themselves proficient with all tools, nor do they enjoy all tools. Whatever safe and efficient method you develop for getting the job done is always fine.
And 'light' is always good, too.
GerryG
Bob G. wrote: