DeWalt DW708 12" SCMS for $503- good saw?

[Lynn Kasdorf]

I'm considering a 12" SCMS since I have a lot of carpentry to do soon, and it can be carried to the house and go back to a permanant place in the shop when done. Also I want to replace my wonderful (but huge) Walker Turner RAS to get back more shop space.

Lowes & HD sell the DeWalt DW708 for $599. I just saw the same saw at Costco for $559.

Hmmm...HD and lowes both have a "beat by 10%" policy, so I should be able to get one of these beauties for $503. Sounds like a no-brainer to me!

Any problems with this model? I've read the reviews on amazon, and a few had major problems but most loved it.

Opinions?

[Lynn Kasdorf]

I've never used an SCMS- is there an adjustment on any brand of SCMS to limit the cut depth in case you don't want to cut all the way through the work?

[Dave Richards]

I've had the DeWalt SCMS for about 4 years. Great saw. You can limit the depth of cut if you want although this is probably not the greatest mechanism for that. It could probably be reworked easily but I haven't cared that much to do it.

One thing that I did do that makes it even better is to replace the plastic throat plate pieces with a zero clearance insert made from 1/4" plywood. As it turned out, the plywood was a perfect fit and a cinch to make.

At first I felt a little buyer's remorse for spending the extra money. Initially I bought it because it would do both left and right bevels and the others available to me wouldn't. (I think that has changed since I bought it) Anyway, the day after I bought it I was telling my father about it. I told him I was worried I'd spent too much. He told me that just that day he'd been trying to cut 4x4 landscape timbers with his 10" CMS. Sometimes he could cut through in a single pass but usually he had to roll the timber to complete the cut. He said I would be happy to have the extra depth capacity along with the sliding function. He was right.

I've used it for cutting vinyl siding (reversed the blade for that) and all kinds of other mean and nasty things. The DeWalt blade that came with it is excellent, too. I was kind of surprised by that since my experience with OEM blades has not been good and I always assume an aftermarket blade will be better.

Go for it, I say.

[Jason Roehl]

I've had mine for 3-4 years. Great saw. It's been in the back of my truck loose too many times, but still is dead-on. Had to adjust it a little out of the box, but that wasn't a big deal. I've used a few other miter saws over the years, and played with a few in the big boxes, but I haven't seen any that I like compared to the 708. Easy to swing and lock the miter. Has a Vernier scale with the pointer, so 1/4deg increments are easy to do. The stock blade isn't bad, but I've since bought the best DeWalt 12" blade (about $100) and that gives glass-smooth cuts, but does tend to burn a little in something like maple. Pull the trigger on it--you'll like it, and that's a good price. If you have any questions, just holler.

[Howard Barlow]

Great saw, great price. I've had mine about 4 years. My first job with it was oak panelling in a room. I cut a jillion pieces of oak molding with it, as well as 1x oak.

Very precise for this kind of work.

[Tom Peterson]

seems to be a good choice, I did a quick check on E-bay and best you could do is $500 delivered, no tax NIB. For the cost of the tax, it may be easier to do HD. I did buy my Makita through E-bay and saved a bunch and received a Makita factory rebate. I went with a 10" because I rarely cut 4 by stock

[Mark Azevedo]

I hope you can get it for $503... but even at $559, that's still a good deal. We have 3 at work and one 12" CMS, all dewalts. We did finally blow one up... this was after 3 solid years of abuse. We run these saws for an average of 15 total minutes a day. That's 15 minutes of trigger pulled, actual cutting. At about 5 seconds a cut you can see why I would tell anyone to buy it. As for the one that blew up. We had it rebuilt, and now runs o.k.
Don't worry about going right out and buying a blade for it either. Unless you really want to spend that cash... The blade out of the box is good, not great, but definitely good. You want great... get a matsushita (don't know if I spelled it right), or Amana.

Mark