Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Keep your blade sharp/clean (clean is usually the biggest culprit) and use a splitter/riving knife and you'll be in similar shape.
The biggest problem with a table saw is kickback. If you have a well dialed in splitter, kickback should be damn near impossible, especially if you build a cross cut sled. Keep your table top waxed so you don't have to muscle anything through, don't forget to set your featherboards and it couldn't hurt to put some board buddies on your fence. If you do all that, you've gotta be pretty damn reckless to catch a digit on a table saw. And for all that stuff you'll be out about $100.00. So with the money you save there, you can get yourself a cabinet grade 3 HP, 220 table saw with more cutting power than most of what you can get from Saw Stop for a reasonable price.
As for the Radial Arm Saw; the only thing I've done on one of those that I don't do on my compound miter saw is dado cuts, but with my table saw I don't need to worry about that. Ultimately there are times you're going to want a table saw for long rip cuts either way and if you're doing anything remotely serious, you'll need both a table saw and a slider of some sort.
I prefer the ease of use of the compound miter saw so with that and a table saw, a radial arm is just completely redundant.
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Really good stuff here on the table saw.
The riving knife will keep the exiting pieces from hitting the back of the saw blade and creating shrapnel.
I think the other half the equation is more about proper blade and rake of the blade for material cut and setting blade height properly.
If you have to push hard to get the board through, then you probably have the blade set too low and you're at major risk for kickback (straight into your guts or nuts). If it's super easy with a bunch of tear out on the bottom face, then you probably have the blade set too high. You should never have a blade on a table saw sticking up way above the top face. Not only is it going to tear the shit out of the bottom face, you have a huge safety risk.
A popular rule of thumb (ironic I know hahaha) is to set the blade so that the gullets clear the top face, then make adjustments from there on test strips. I've found that it isn't necessarily the gullets that you want to be sure clear. If you set a tooth at its highest point (top dead center) and ensure that the carbide clears, then that's usually enough. If the gullets clear then you end up with sawdust all over the place. Tablesaws are built to have material exit on the downstroke.