Thread: Wadkin Bursgreen BRA350

Originally Posted by riverbuilder

...we saw the radial arm saws they had in the big skip bin after they had cut the arm that the saw head runs on in half, rendering them useless...

Aaaargh!! Sacrilege.

Thank goodness I have a one man weekend warrior workshop - and aren't subject to that kind of PC sensibility. I hope they weren't Wadkins .

Cheers, Vann.

Originally Posted by riverbuilder

I didn’t “hear” it at all. I was running a workshop which had the inspectors come from Worksafe Australia and they slapped a notice of desist on a couple of machines, one of which was the radial arm saw, they then came two weeks later to inspect our modifications to some guards on the spindle moulder and that we had removed the saw and rendered it inoperable.
The other instance was at a Shopfitting place which the old man and I did a lot of contract work for and we saw the radial arm saws they had in the big skip bin after they had cut the arm that the saw head runs on in half, rendering them useless. They were instructed to do this by the workplace safety inspectors, as well as other items to be addressed.

Yeah ? But the Radial Arm saw hasn't been "Banned" by anyone .

Your first statement in post 7 was a little OTT that's all .
This one .
"In the commercial woodworking field, these saws have been banned and their use abolished for quite some time. "

Any alteration from original to do with guarding can have worksafe doing what they do . I had them in once and I had to fix guarding on My band saw and Table saw. They didn't say a thing about my Wadkin BRA radial arm saw . I'm sure they could come up with anything they liked if they wanted to.

Lets go shopping for radial arm saws . There's plenty available . Check out the nice big Robinson in there atm .

Radial Arm Saw

I have some nice brochures of the BRA saw.

Hows some of the silly things they advertised you could do !

This first one looks just crazy .
How to get your A## kicked by a saw!

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They came with hold down guides for stuff like this . Its at the back .
I bet they got lost and guys still tried such stuff.
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It all looks very dangerous and there is much safer ways with better machines for each operation .

I love the saw for its rugged fast way of docking stuff of all sizes, specially big stuff to length . I do trench on one and that's as far away I get from just docking . I did set up a grinding wheel in it once for trying to dress up some steel as well .


The worst thing that's happened in our workshop is someone pulled out the saw which grabbed a piece of wood stupidly left out front of the blade and it slammed back against the fence jamming the thumb of the operator. Yow !!

Originally Posted by auscab

I have some nice brochures of the BRA saw.

Hows some of the silly things they advertised you could do !

This first one looks just crazy .
How to get your A## kicked by a saw!

IMG_6923 - Copya.jpg


They came with hold down guides for stuff like this . Its at the back .
I bet they got lost and guys still tried such stuff.
IMG_6924 - Copya.jpg


IMG_6926 - Copya.jpg

IMG_6927 - Copya.jpg

IMG_6925 - Copya.jpg

IMG_6928 - Copya.jpg


It all looks very dangerous and there is much safer ways with better machines for each operation .

I love the saw for its rugged fast way of docking stuff of all sizes, specially big stuff to length . I do trench on one and that's as far away I get from just docking . I did set up a grinding wheel in it once for trying to dress up some steel as well .


The worst thing that's happened in our workshop is someone pulled out the saw which grabbed a piece of wood stupidly left out front of the blade and it slammed back against the fence jamming the thumb of the operator. Yow !!

I watched a pair YouTube videos from the wadkin archives on the BRA the other night and it showed a bloke doing a lot of those operations. It was eye opening alright...

Here are the videos links for those who haven’t seen them:
part 1
Wadkin Archive - BRA Universal Radial Saw (Part 1) - YouTube
part 2
Wadkin Archive - BRA Universal Radial Saw (Part 2) - YouTube

Yeah safe to say I'm never moving the axis of the saw blade off vertical. I've ordered one of the carbitool blades so just have to wait til it arrives. I've moved all the timber that was in the way. I'll post a pic when I've got it in place.

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Very nice. A little odd that the sawdust port is pointed at the operator.

Those BRAs are certainly a lot more versatile than my CK. Thank goodness I can't do some of those functions...

Cheers, vann.

Originally Posted by Bill Houghton

Very nice. A little odd that the sawdust port is pointed at the operator.

Bill

I thought that odd too, but in the videos posted by conarobb you can see a 90 deg adaptor, not that it was being used for dust collection . Also when the saw is in some of the many other positions the ejector port points in a different direction.

Using the saw in the horizontal cutting position (cutting lap joints) is a little confronting!

Regards
Paul

Here she is in close to her final position. I couldn't resist plugging it in for a test and to my surprise the blade now spins in the wrong direction! Any quick and easy fixes to this problem? Cheers, Zac

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Originally Posted by Fergiz01

...and to my surprise the blade now spins in the wrong direction! Any quick and easy fixes to this problem?

Yes, very easy fix.

To reverse the direction of a 3-phase motor you simply swap over two of the three phase wires. So, for example, if the wires into the connection box on your saw (or at the plug if you prefer) go L1 red, L2 white, L3 blue - change them to L1 red, L2 blue, L3 white. If you've got different colours, and you're not sure, just ask again.

MAKE SURE IT'S UNPLUGGED BEFORE YOU START.

And just a silly question - you do have the blade in the right way around?

Cheers, Vann.

Brilliant, thanks Vann! I'll give it a go. Yes blade in the right way haha.

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Here's what I'm looking at. So I'll swap the yellow and blue wires? Cheers, Zac

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If you have multiple 3ph outlets it's probably a good idea to check that they are all wired for the same direction of rotation. The easiest way is to move a small motor to each outlet and check the direction of rotation. If any spin in the opposite direction rewire the outlet, after turning the power off at the switchboard.