Woodworking

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by notorious

Get a Sawstop. They are expensive but a thumb is more.

I have nicked each thumb the last 15 years. I am not ****ing around anymore. If you really need a decent table saw that stores small get a dewalt 745. Christmas sales at Home Depot usually prices them from 225-275. That's a steal.

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.