Thread: Radial Arm Saw

It depends what you want it to do. If you are expecting consistant accurate 90 degree cuts then you may be dissappointed. Like many pieces of machinery some time spent fine tuning greatly increases the accuracy. It is relatively easy to adjust the fence to blade angle but what you may not be able to change is the straight line accuracy of the saw itself.
If buying second hand go for a reputable brand and look for abuse.

Ozwinner,

They can be dangerous and inaccurate.

Having said that, I bought one about 8 years ago. I use it for crosscuts quite a bit. I found if you use it for ripping, it takes quite some time to set it back up accurately for crosscutting again.

Very handy for making tenons and for fine tuning the length of a board in crosscut mode, you can take off a fraction of a mm if necessary.

I haven’t injured myself on it but I am safety conscious and I can see how it would be easy to be a victim of a radial arm saw if safety was not exercised.

Once accurately set up mine stays that way, but I regularly check it.

Mine is a DeWalt, I bought it new.

- Wood Borer

Hi WB
What model Dewalt is it? There are a couple in the Melbourne tradeing poast
Can a dado set be put onto a radial arm saw?

Cheers, Al

Ozwinner,

I am at work at the moment (otherwise I would be in my shed doing woodwork) but from memory I think the model number is something like 1204.

You are welcome to look at mine and test run it if you want before you purchase.

- Wood Borer

Ozwinner

You can put a dado into a radial arm saw but probaly depending on the brand.

Ideal for trenching out for half lap joints and you would get more depth out of the radial and possibly more travel out of the arm depending on the size of the saw.

That would be the only advantage over a CSMS without a depth adjustment.

Ryobi have brought out a 12" CSMS with twin rails and laser at about $900 at Gasweld. It is more into a tradesman type with positive locks on the angle settings. It has depth adjustment also for trenching.

The problem with second hand Radial Arm Saws is that a lot of them are worn out on the rails and difficult to get accurate.

I have a Ryobi radial arm saw, given to me by my brother, he hardly ever used it. Currently all I have used it for is for trenching, and I must admit it did a great job, and it is fairly accurate.

Now, when I used it, it was a little scary, as it is a very large machine. and unfortunately it did not come with a safety guard for the blade. I think you can see where this is heading.....

Almost having completed the trenching, I lost concentration and as a result lost half of my thumb nail.....yes I screamed.... and looking at the injury... nearly fainted, but I held on long enough to realise how lucky I was not to loose half of my thumb..

It wasn't the blade, just the timber being knocked form my hand. So I learnt another lesson, oh yeah, and after nearly two weeks, my thumb is still sore. It is amazing how much you need a thumb to do the most minor things......

For my radial arm saw, I can still purchase most attachements for it, and I am amazed at what can be done with it, but saying that I feel that other machinery can do the same job, ie; routers, drop saws ect. (and be a lot safer)

If anyone is interested I took a pic of my thumb, to remind me of my stupidity.

Bad news about the thumb ..... it could look like Allen could pick up a great quality Ryobi in the Coffs Harbour area rather soon.

Give us a look for the experience.

Having used a RAS and a SCMS I think the scms is more dangerous than a radial arm. If you are looking secondhand the industrial saws will outlast the modern ones like Dewalts many times over , but many of the older saws need to have guards etc made for them.
As far as ripping with a RAS, that seems very dangerous.

I wouldnt use it for ripping, I have a great TS for that.
Mainly for cross cutting, dados.

Al

G'day oz,

I owned a RAS up until around '88. I sold it because I found I was doing a lot more ripping than cross cutting, and a RAS is NOT a good saw for accurate and safe ripping: the blade rotates in the 'wrong' direction, plus 95% of the cross cutting I did was either narrow enough to be handled by my drop saw (around 4"-5") or too wide for the RAS to handle as it was limited to around 18".

You really need to define what you need to do, and then look around for the best equipment for the job.

HTH,

Ozwinner,

For cross cuts and dado joints they are good because of the fine control you have for depth adjustment. One advantage over a TS is that you can see where you are cutting although I think a good TS would have more accuracy once it has been set up. SCMS saws do not appear to have fine height adjustment.

Personally I will keep my radial arm saw even after I buy a good TS but I need to wait for my bigger shed.

- Wood Borer

Al,
I guess you found a post somewhere with me ranting about RASs . Besides the problems with alignment and lack of suitable (negative rake) blades there's one other problem as I see it and that's accuraccy. On a table saw the cut occurs on the reference face (ie, the timber sits on the table and this same side is cut) So if you are cutting a swag of half lap joints and your thicknesser crept somewhat the day before resulting in a range of timber from 40mm to 39mm all the cuts you make with your dado balde will still be the same depth. With a RAS however the reference face is opposite to the cutting face. Any discrepancies in timber dimensions will translate into a discrepancy in the cut depth. Furthermore on a table saw if the stock lifts somewhat during a cut it will be too shallow which is easy to fix. On a RAS if your stock lifts somewhat you'll end up with a deeper cut which is not always possible to fix.

As far as a RAS being safer than a SCMS, well I can't see it. Both have guards on the blades but I've yet to see a RAS guard that wasn't a pain to use. If a guard is awkward you'll end up removing it. On a SCMS you bring the unit forward, then down into the cut and back, it's easy to control as you are pushing back against the saw's tendency to come forward. On a RAS you bring the spinning blade forward into the stock in the same direction of travel as it wants to go. I find it much harder to control, it's rather like using your circular saw backwards.

I reckon if you're only looking at it for dados and crosscutting you'd be better off putting the money into building/buying a sliding table.

Mick

Ozwinner,

I agree with Mick that a radial-arm saw is not worth buying; you should be able to fulfil all your needs using just the table saw, if you buy an 8" dado set (US$149 from Lee Valley, if you have a 5/8" arbor) and make yourself one or more crosscut sleds. The only limitation will be that you will be unable to crosscut really thick stock.

Rocker