Craftsman 10" radial arm saw for $75

[dennis thompson]

There is a used Craftsman 10" radial arm saw with a 1 1/4" formica covered table and extra blades for sale in my local paper for $75, is this a decent saw? good price?
Thanks
Dennis

[glenn bradley]

There are different models but I never could get my C-man RAS to cut accurately. I have used good ones and they are a pleasure. As long as your doing rough work it should be OK. IMHO.

[Allen Bookout]

I agree with Glenn. Mine was OK for crosscutting but not for ripping. It was not very accurate at that. What year model is it. Check to see if it was one of the ones that was recalled and if it is do not buy it at any cost. I used mine for years but I finally just junked it as I did not want to sell it to an unsuspecting buyer.

[Tyler Howell]

What Glenn Said.
I couldn't give mine away.:o

[John Bailey]

I used one for many years. I got good service out of it, but I had to reset it almost every job and I never felt safe with it. I still have it because I couldn't even give it away. The used DeWalts are great machines, but even at 50 years old they are at least twice that cost for the smallest.

If you buy, know that you're getting a machine with questionable accuracy and safety. However, you can do good work with it, it's just harder.

John
(By the way, if you want it, come and get it.)

[Matt Campbell]

Dennis, I bought a Craftsman RAS a while ago for $75. It has done a great job for me. Mine was made back in the mid 60s. I wouldn't buy one much newer than that.

[Greg Robbins]

You can get boat anchor's for a lot less than that! :D

[Kent Fitzgerald]

Check to see if it was one of the ones that was recalled and if it is do not buy it at any cost.
Why not? Under the terms of the recall, the manufacturer will either provide a retrofit kit, or if no kit is available, they'll pay $100 for the return of the saw motor. Seems to me that the worst-case scenario is $25 profit and a free tool stand.

Details are at: http://radialarmsawrecall.com/

[Bruce Benjamin]

I have an early 90's version and I gotta say that for the most part it's worked just fine. It's easy to tune up and for cross cuts it's been very accurate. I used it for rips with fair success for a while before I bought a table saw and as long as I paid attention to my setups the cuts were about as accurate as my table saw is now, and that's dead-on. But ripping on a RAS, especially narrow rips, can be a little intimidating for some people.

I think good performance depends on how well the user is able to set up the machine, or at least how much time they're willing to spend to get it right the first time. Mine has stayed in tune for quite a while now although I only use it for some crosscuts and short crosscut dados. I don't have any plans to get rid of mine and I have a shop full of ways to cut wood using electricity. Knowing what I know now, if I didn't already have one and found one in great shape for $75 I'd buy it. That being said, I'd rather have an older Delta or DeWalt RAS if I were looking right now. To each their own!

Bruce

[Allen Bookout]

Why not? Under the terms of the recall, the manufacturer will either provide a retrofit kit, or if no kit is available, they'll pay $100 for the return of the saw motor. Seems to me that the worst-case scenario is $25 profit and a free tool stand.

Details are at: http://radialarmsawrecall.com/

Well, I guess so if you want to go to that amount of trouble for $25. You have to ship the saw carriage and motor to them and I do not see anything about who pays the shipping but I suspect that the owner would, so do not forget to take that off of your $25 profit. My thought was that some of the recalled ones were not very good to start with. At least mine wasn't.

[Brad Townsend]

Well, I guess so if you want to go to that amount of trouble for $25. You have to ship the saw carriage and motor to them and I do not see anything about who pays the shipping but I suspect that the owner would, so do not forget to take that off of your $25 profit. My thought was that some of the recalled ones were not very good to start with. At least mine wasn't.
When I returned mine, I called the number and they sent me out a box to put it in and a prepaid UPS call tag. All I had to do was remove the motor, put it in the box and set it on the front porch. Took me all of fifteen minutes.

[Allen Bookout]

I guess that I should have sent mine in after reading about what Brad had to say. I suppose that I was just tired of messing with it and was happy to see it go to the dump. After all I bought it in 1968 or 1969 so I got my use out of it.

[Bruce Benjamin]

Well, I guess so if you want to go to that amount of trouble for $25. You have to ship the saw carriage and motor to them and I do not see anything about who pays the shipping but I suspect that the owner would, so do not forget to take that off of your $25 profit. My thought was that some of the recalled ones were not very good to start with. At least mine wasn't.

If they required you to find a box and pay for shipping nobody would do it.

Bruce

[Bruce Benjamin]

When I returned mine, I called the number and they sent me out a box to put it in and a prepaid UPS call tag. All I had to do was remove the motor, put it in the box and set it on the front porch. Took me all of fifteen minutes.


Hmmm...Find enough of these $75 saws and you're making $100 an hour!;) :D

Bruce

[Allen Bookout]

I give!!!! I give!!!! I will never make that mistake again.

[Charles Cannon]

I gave $90 for one last fall. I'am redoing my cornice with vinyl this summer and it works great for cutting it. I turned an old fine tooth blade (not carbide) around backwards, clamped a stop block to the table and cut up a stack at one time. Thats not really woodworking thiugh and it doesn't matter if they are 1/16 out of square.
Cannon

[Dan O'Connor]

I routinely see old dewalts on craigslist or 100 or less, including the best old models. I am in NJ, and I realize that many more were sold in the northeast. I have a 7790 and really never even touch my tablesaw because I am used to using it for both cross cuts and rips. It doesn't require frequent adjustments.

From what I have heard, only the very earliest craftsman radials were ok machines. I would wait for a better machine. So many machines are mispriced both high and low. You'll find what you want at a reasonable price.

[Chris Barnett]

Dan, out of curiousity, what would be an "early" Craftsman RAS? Will make a difference as to what I do with mine when I get a new TS.

[Rick Potter]

Hi Dennis,

Getting back to your question. Check it out, see if it will cut a right angle without wandering. It's not hard to check. Take your carpenters square with you and put it against the fence, then pull the blade and see if it's square. If not, ask the owner to adjust it for you...takes two minutes, and see if it will hold the square line. There are adjustments for heel, and the table adjusts to keep the depth of cut straight. Many times owners have never set the saw up right.

When I bought my DeWalt RAS, the owner had owned it for 10 years, and said he never could get it to cut right, so he parked it after a year and it just sat. When I brought it home, I found that NONE of the adjustments was anywhere near correct, and the fasteners were only finger tight. A couple hours of tuning up, and making a new table, and I have used it for at least 5 years with only minor adjustments.

If I may suggest...plan on only using it for crosscuts and you will be happier. RAS's will rip, but it isn't what they are really designed to do.

Don't forget to ask for the discount from the $75 asking price. If the blades are good ones, I don't see how you can lose much money, and you get the stand or table too.

Rick Potter

[Bob Feeser]

Yeah, I have one too. I bought it new, and paid full retail for it. Talking about learning something the hard way.

You spend an hour setting the saw up, then go back to the detents, and none of them are true. You can set it at a perfect 90, make a cut, fine, then go over to a 45, click it in, and it is really a 48, you get the idea. Worse yet, you go back to the 90 that you spent 10 minutes to get it perfect, click it into the detent, and it is a 92. True junk.

Did I get rid of it? No. What I did was make it a kerfing station, with a set of dado chippers exactly 1/4". I trued it up at a 90 tightened it down real good, and don't move it. Leave it there. At least it does that properly. Then I can raise and lower it, and move the workpiece along the fence, and make nice kerfs. I lucked out on a cheap set of Avenger stackable dado blades, that oddly enough don't leave any ridges in the kerfs. I only paid about 40 bucks for the set. I keep my Freud set for the table saw, when I want to custom set a width, and do larger panels etc.

You wouldn't believe how convenient it is to have a permanent kerfing station sitting there. You can make your marks, both depth, and width, and do a nice job kerfing them out. You can even set up stops so they all start at the exact same edge.

The only other problem is the top make out of pressboard, winds up sagging on both edges, left and right. So what I do, in order to guarantee I have a straight platform, without going to the bother of replacing the top, is to use 2 extra long clamps, that double as speaders, and I lift the edges off the floor, until I get a straight top. I guess I should figure out a way to build a lower support, but I have a hard time spending (wasting) much time with the saw. I keep dreaming of that 1100 Delta. Those old ones are a dream I understand.

Meanwhile, I really do enjoy it when I use it as a kerfing station. Zero set up time, and nice results, as long as you do not change the miter setting.
The other thing that is important is the model that I have has 2 cables attached to it as a safety device. It only allows it to feed at one of 2 rates. Extra slow, and slow. That way if the blades catch the wood, you do not have a racing saw blade attached to the motor flying towards you. Many a story out there of wood workers losing hands because they used one of the old saw, and laid their other hand in front of it, way back at the time, but not counting on the saw kicking back toward them.

It is the nature of the saw. It has to force the wood back toward the fence, so it is acting like a belt sander with the front racing toward you. If they did it the other way around, the saw would head toward the back, but the work piece would be flying toward you.

If it is the type that is older, and doesn't have the separate motor for the feed rate, with 2 steel cables attached to the head, I would consider passing on the deal. If it was on old Delta, then I would be extra careful using it, and considering adding it to the shop. ALthough I have no first hand experience at the old Delta's.

So that is my bit on the Sears Craftsman never keeps a setting 10 inch Professional Radial Arm Saw. And I used to stare at that thing for so long in the store before I finally sprung for I think 525 to buy it. (It's been a while since I bought it, not sure of the price)

I would offer the guy $25 bucks, and tell him it is rated as a boat anchor, just like mentioned here at SMC.

I seriously do smile every time I use it, realizing that I have zero set up time to make kerfs, instead of having to convert the table saw. I am getting flawlessly clean, and square dadoes out of it. I recently made some shelving, using planed 2x4 stock, and the whole unit went together flush, and you could not see any tear out or ridges where the joints met together. For a cheapy set, if you do get the saw, look toward Amazon, and the reviews on the Avengers. Not a Freud or Forrest, but not far away from that either. The carbide is not a last forever, and if you sandwhich them, the dimensions might not be what the blade says, but you can manage to put together an exact 1/4 inch, then just do repeat cuts to whatever width you need.

See if I belonged to SMC before I bought it back in 2000 or thereabouts, I wouldn't have had to buy an anchor for my boat too. :)

PS: I just looked up the 1200 dollar Delta at Amazon, and the 2nd and 3rd reviews stated that it kept a setting, and one of the reviewers stated that this was the 4th radial arm they owned, and this is the first one that holds a setting. Their was some mixed comments though, including the oddity of when lowering the height of the blade is a bit strange. I know on the Craftsman, it hangs on a setting, then suddenly drops, so you more or less have to creep up to a setting, then if you exceed it, drop it some, and try over. I don't know what the all time dream radial arm is, but I think Norm uses a Delta on NYW too. I have to look into it, I guess their is a very expensive dream model.

[Dan O'Connor]

Chris, look at OWWM at the circa 60's versions that track on the outside of a solid arm. I have heard these are much better than the later hollow arms that track on the inside. I haven't owned one though, and only read that. I have owned 2 dewalts and can attest to their ability to hold adjustments.

[Jules Dominguez]

Craftsman's an easy target for elitists, but the tools they make aren't a bad deal for the price. I have three routers, and the Craftsman has the most user-friendly features. I use it when it's the handiest or best for a given job.
I also have a Sawstop, and a Craftsman 10" RAS. I use the Craftsman for most of my crosscuts. It can be set up to make accurate cross-cuts and as long as you don't meddle with it by changing the setup to make rip cuts or miters, which I don't, it holds it's setting and it's safe to use.
I started woodworking in the early 1960's to make things for my kids which I couldn't otherwise afford at that time, and I bought Craftsman tools to make them with. I can afford any tool I want now, but I still use some of my Craftsman tools.

[Jim Kountz]

Whatever you do make sure its NOT the one with the digital read out. My BIL had that one and when the digital isnt working or the battery is dead you have no way of reading the angles for rip, miter or bevel cuts since there is no manual scale. Plus the saw was overall a hunk of crap.

[Don Hein]

Thanks for providing the link to information on the Craftsman radial-arm saw recall. Looks like I have a non-retrofittable 10" model from the '70s.

I'd been thinking lately about going from a RAS to compound sliding miter saw, together with a tablesaw upgrade from my old Ryobi BT3000. Though I've liked the small footprint and mobility of the Ryobi, its table is small and accuracy is fussy.

I'm interested to know if any of the sliding miter saws have capacity for a dado blade and capability to accurately cut dadoes? Which have better dust collection schemes?

My amount of shop work probably doesn't support a cabinet saw. Maybe a hybrid. Which are the top few offering consistent accuracy and well-designed dust collection?

[Jeff Raymond]

I'm not an elitist by any means, but work with a lot of hardwood so Craftsman tools with cords on them are not on my list.

FROM EXPERIENCE I believe a radial arm saw is the most dangerous and inaccurate tool in a shop.

Get a good compound miter saw and use your TS.

Leave the radial wherever it is and build something you love with other stuff.