Pull or push a radial arm saw?

[Ron Jones near Indy]

My first real WWing experience was in 1957 when I helped (gopher) my dad make kitchen cabinets. He bought a nice used Craftsman RAS and still uses it today (he will be 90 next month). The book with it said pull, never push. I have taught WWing for all or a part of the last 42 years. I don't ever remember seeing a WWing text, a manual or anything from a well respected publisher show that pushing is proper--the ALL say pull. For about 32 of those 42 years there has been a RAS in the shop. We always pulled--never had an accident. For that I am most thankful.

[Peter Quinn]

I suppose with a RAS and a good negative hook blade it works either way. Push, pull, just keep your hands out of the path of the blade and feed slowly. A RAS can handle the climb cut given its mass and the fact that everything else is fixed except the head. I can remember framing a house as a kid with my family, and one uncle that worked as a machinist refused to use the RAS on the pull because it was unsafe. Of course he had a cigar in one hand and a beer in the other, so you can imagine how high on his list safety was.

With a SCMS, always pull forward all the way, lower the head and push into the stock. And make sure the stock will not pinch the blade. Man, they have enough power to buck like a bronco. You may think they are safer than a RAS till yours does this.

[Larry Edgerton]

When I use SCMS I pull through only cutting in about an 1/8" to 1/4" into the top of the pc and push the saw back through to cut off. Seem to leave a good splinter free cut on the face and less chance of pinching or binding during cutoff. My 2-cents

Ditto. This is my prefered method.

On the RAS the only time I push is when using a dado. I find the dado blade wants to come at you too much so I clamp the piece and push.

[Lee Schierer]

The RAS will cut cleaner if you pull the blade into the cut. Pushing the blade back into the cut will significantly increase the splintering and tear out on the upper surface.

The correct method is to lead the saw into the cut while resisting the tendency for the blade to pull into the cut. Higher tooth count blades with negative hook angles are generally recommended for RAS use.

I own a RAS and it rarely gets used because I get superior quality cuts on my TS.

[Phillip Gregory]

Sorry for the thread necro but since I came across this thread, I felt compelled to mention a few things.

1. Radial arm saws are always pulled through the cut. Yes, that is a climb cut but with a proper zero hook or negative hook blade and a well adjusted/aligned and stable saw, it has little to no tendency to climb due to the blade geometry. Proper bearing preload will require a small effort (5-7 lbs) to pull the saw ahead in the arm, a zero or negative hook blade will not self feed, and proper alignment will essentially eliminate the tendency of the kerf to pinch behind the saw, and if all else fails, you are supposed to keep yourself out of the line of the blade as with any other saw out there and the saw carriage will reach the end of the arm and be stopped by the end of the arm. The kerf closing on a crosscut on a well adjusted saw of any type is uncommon as long as nothing such as a rip fence manages to catch the offcut and pinch it into the back of the blade. You are cutting across the grain, the grain is running the wrong direction to close up on you such as it can and does in a rip cut.

2. Pushing a RAS will cause the teeth at the back of the blade which are rising upwards to exert a force that will try to lift the workpiece off of the table and over the rear fence. Pulling the RAS will cause a downward force to be exerted by the teeth of the blade. I've seen people push a RAS and this is exactly what happens, especially with a high hook angle tablesaw blade. Piece gets caught and thrown back into the wall. Makes a very ugly noise and sometimes bangs up somebody's hand.

3. The issues with RASes trying to climb are due to using a positive hook angle blade (especially a typical +15 or +20 degree tablesaw blade) and having a saw where the arm is not perpendicular to the fence and the blade is not perpendicular to the table.

4. The most common saw in my experience (I work in the medical profession) to cause injury is the chainsaw. Having 16+ inches of completely unguarded chain cutting unknown wood, often while the limb is still up in the air, is potentially very dangerous. The next most common piece of woodcutting/woodworking equipment to cause problems is actually the jointer. People don't think it is a dangerous piece of equipment because it's not a saw. The knives or inserts dull and instead of sharpening/changing them, they increase feed pressure. Their paddles, if they ever used them, slip so they feed by hand and hook their right pinky over the back of the board for more force. Their pinky gets "jointed" as they pass the end of the board over the cutterhead. There was a large cooperage mill where I used to live and there were quite a few folks who were missing the end of their right pinky finger, if not the entire finger, after jointing staves improperly. The number of guys who cut fingers off with a tablesaw paled in comparison to the number of guys who jointed their pinkies.

[Wayne Lomman]

I 100% agree. Well said. Interesting that the chainsaw is the commonest source of injury. Many years back when I had cause to be talking to a surgeon for the wrong reasons, he had found that the mitre saw was keeping him in a job. This was in the period not long after they first became available as a building site tool. Cheers

[Kurt Kintner]

My only experience with a RAS is my old Craftsman ....
My manual says "pull" ....
Always pull thru the stock using a negative hook blade ....
As far as it "climbing" ?? That's impossible, as the saw would
have to bend the post to do that, as another contributor mentioned ....
I expect mine would just stall if fed too fast....
Another reason to "pull" is the dust gets directed to the back
of the machine... I have a Big Gulp behind mine with a 4 inch
dust collector hose attached ...
I wouldn't be without this machine.... I do all my crosscuts with it.
I've never crosscut stock on my table saw .... The miter gauge
is in a drawer someplace...

[Robert Willing]

I have since sold my late 90's Craftsman RAS and it had an anti climb control so pull was the technique. You had 3 choices for controlling the speed of the cut.

[Keith Weber]

The SCMS has a hinged head. Pulling the saw can allow it to ride up on the workpiece and take a run at you.

I have two short fingers that say a RAS can also take a run at you even without the hinged head.

[Ed McEowen]

I did almost all of my early woodworking on a Montgomery Ward RAS. They supplied a rather coarse, positive angle blade with the new saw. I always pushed because it just worked better and caused fewer accidents. I later acquired a Craftsman with a negative hook blade and found it possible to follow the instructions, although it still wants to climb if I'm not careful.

[Phillip Gregory]

Every manual I have seen from any manufacturer- (Sears, OMGA, Original Saw Co., old DeWalt manuals) all say the saw should be pulled. I would especially trust the Original Saw Co. manuals as they are an America-based maker of currently-produced larger saws that are generally designed to be used in commercial/industrial settings and thus sell to firms that are very cognizant of OSHA, their workers' comp carrier, and the local ambulance chasers. If they said something obviously incorrect in their official manual, they would be very quickly put out of business by lawsuits and lack of sales from firms that followed the official literature and got shut down/charged ridiculous premiums for worker's comp/sued into oblivion by the ambulance chasers.

[Bradley Gray]

Thank you Phillip. I have many years in pulling on big RAS's. I am surprised how many folks push.

I worked in a lumber mill while in high school. The 18" saw would run constantly while we cut 300 12 ft boards in half or whatever while loading them on the truck. If we were to shut off the saw and wait for the blade to stop between cuts and then thread each board behind the blade we would have been looking for new jobs by the end of the day.

[Phillip Gregory]

I attribute the "push" to people who grew up using other pieces of equipment. You always push stock into the rotation of the blade with a tablesaw, period. You push stock into the rotation of the cutterhead with a router or shaper, with very few specific exceptions, for which you take much care. Ditto with a joiner and a planer. Also, the SCMS came after the RAS and it is appropriately a "push into the stock" saw as well.

I recently acquired a big old 7 1/2 hp medium arm DeWalt GE which can swing either a 16" or 20" blade depending on guard, mine has the 16" guard and a 16" blade. I've used a couple of 1970s and 1980s era Craftsman saws in the past and had been instructed to both pull and push in the past depending on who was telling me how to operate the RAS when I was younger. Pull is clearly the proper way to do it and even with what were most certainly significantly positive-hook blades (what else did you have in the 1980s and early 1990s?), never had issues with pulling the saw. I did manage to shoot a workpiece into the wall pushing the saw when I was a kid, and that was a "see, these are bad, use the tablesaw" moment. (Now I have a relatively decent cabinet saw and like it a lot, but it isn't the perfect tool for everything, hence I bought a RAS.) I had never operated a saw as big as the GE I am rehabbing although the old Central Hardware lumberyard my Dad and I went to when I was a kid had a giant old round arm DeWalt, which was either a GA or GE by the size of it. The saw was very close to the checkout and it always drew my attention to it when it ran, and the Pimply-Faced Youth operating the saw always pulled the saw. It would have been very neat if that was the saw I bought, but mine apparently came from a Payless Cashways in or near Kansas City according to the previous owner. Wrong defunct lumberyard from the wrong side of the state, but neat nonetheless.

It is interesting that the main "push" proponent thought I was not too swift to get the GE as in his opinion RASes are extremely dangerous, while a major "pull" proponent thought it was pretty darned neat and that he'd get one too if he was young enough to wrestle an 800 pound saw down into his non-walkout basement shop. For the record, my GE with the 16" blade takes about 2 1/2 minutes to spin down.

[Roy Turbett]

I use an older Craftsman RAS that in the instructions tells you to push the blade through the material, NOT to pull it through!

What year is your saw? Sears started selling DeWalt saws in the late 50's and all the DeWalt manuals I've read say to pull cut. My 1979 Craftsman manual also said to pull cut.

[Roy Turbett]

For the record, my GE with the 16" blade takes about 2 1/2 minutes to spin down.

The blade spinning for that length of time often indicates that the motor bearings are dry and need replacement. I've had to do bearing replacements on three 50's vintage DeWalts that I restored. There are a number of posts at OWWM.org that show how to do it.