Do you have a radial arm saw and do you use it?

[Darcy Warner]

Fairly similar to a unipoint, which is my favorite

[Bill Berklich]

10" Craftsman - works like a champ and would not trade it. I like it better than my 12" Delta Chopsaw for most work.

[Brett Baum]

I grew up using my dad's 12" Craftsman RAS. He passed away 13 years ago but I've still used it for working on things for mom when I visited. Now she's moving and I don't have room for it at this time. I really wish I did as there's lots more I feel I can do well with that over my Ryobi BT3000 table saw.

[Peter Christensen]

Brett take it apart and store it. They can easily be broken down into three pieces. The metal base, the post/arm and the carriage itself. I have an old Dewalt 9” that I have like that.

So far that makes my 9” the smallest saw mentioned in the thread.

[Kevin Perez]

I’ve owned several good (i.e., vintage, cast iron) RASs over the past 15 years. My current one is a 1959 DeWalt MBF. It is my go-to saw for cross cuts and angle cuts. It’s a but underpowered for wide dados, which is too bad, but I like it so much I don’t want to swap it out for a larger model. I never use it for ripping, but properly set up, and using the guards and pawls, it should be about as safe as a table saw.

[Jeff Duncan]

For something like that, which probably doesn't come up very often, a good hand saw would IMO be the preferred option.

I like my DeWalt 780 SCMS for the "small" stuff.

Preferred in a hobby shop..... not when one needs to pay the bills Don't get me wrong, I use handsaws at home all the time, kind of a relaxing change of pace. But at work they rarely see use, only for small odds and ends that are quicker to cut with a Japanese style saw then to turn on a powered saw. I had that sapele cut to rough length, jointed, planed and ripped into 2 blanks in the time it would have taken with a decent handsaw

JeffD

[Doug Dawson]

Preferred in a hobby shop..... not when one needs to pay the bills Don't get me wrong, I use handsaws at home all the time, kind of a relaxing change of pace. But at work they rarely see use, only for small odds and ends that are quicker to cut with a Japanese style saw then to turn on a powered saw. I had that sapele cut to rough length, jointed, planed and ripped into 2 blanks in the time it would have taken with a decent handsaw

I think "which probably doesn't come up very often" is the operative phrase. When you're in production, it would have been a no-brainer to spend thousands on a good megasaw.

BTW, few people nowadays have used a _good_ western-style crosscut saw, _properly_sharpened_. It can be a revelation, and very quick. You should check it out. Companies like Bad Axe still make them, but the old Disstons etc are still around (and are usually in desperate need of sharpening.) The hardware store doesn't.

[jack forsberg]

Preferred in a hobby shop..... not when one needs to pay the bills Don't get me wrong, I use handsaws at home all the time, kind of a relaxing change of pace. But at work they rarely see use, only for small odds and ends that are quicker to cut with a Japanese style saw then to turn on a powered saw. I had that sapele cut to rough length, jointed, planed and ripped into 2 blanks in the time it would have taken with a decent handsaw

JeffD

+ 1 Jeff as good a hand saw is the very best (bad ax) cost more than a big saw. i got these saws (wadkin CC) with 4 dado stacks . sold one stack and paid for the saws . sold one of the saw and made money . so my saw cost nothing with 3 stacks 16" by 2" wide .

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[Dennis McCullen]

Brett take it apart and store it. They can easily be broken down into three pieces. The metal base, the post/arm and the carriage itself. I have an old Dewalt 9” that I have like that.

So far that makes my 9” the smallest saw mentioned in the thread.

I also have a DeWalt 9" RAS that I bought two years ago and I love it. It is a 1959 and I believe the model is 925. I put a new red 8-1/2" blade on it and use it almost every week, despite a lull in woodworking. I sold my old Craftsman bought in 1978 about five years ago and missed the ease of dadoes and simply cutting stock to length with a great view from the top. I recently placed it in line (and height) with my 12" Makita miter saw bench to utilize the support of the tables from both tools. You can tell from the pic (I hope to upload) that it was found in the wild and had to be hog-tied to get it home! HA!

[phil harold]

I have a 12” old iron Dewalt
Accurate
Powerful
Smooth
Great place to store wood on

[Peter Christensen]

Dennis mine is the, maybe older, rounded arm version like the one in the link.
url

[Dino Achilleos]

New guy here

Picked up a used Delta 10 (33-990C) last week. Just finished making retractable wheels for it, as it takes 2 to move it. Looking forward to getting to know it after, making a table, setting / squaring it up, and finding a project to christen it with. I'm thinking a simple picture frame . . .

As an aside what blade do you use with your RAS?

[Phillip Gregory]

As an aside what blade do you use with your RAS?

Currently I use the 15" version of CMT's 219 series sliding compound miter saw/radial arm saw blade. It is a 100 tooth -5 degree hook 4xATB + raker tooth blade with a 0.126" kerf. This blade was apparently made for a Hitachi miter saw. It was locally available and relatively inexpensive for a blade that is appropriate for my 16" saw. It works decently but is not awesome, I'd compare its cut quality to a typical 50 tooth thin kerf combination blade in a tablesaw. Not bad, but nowhere near as good as the Freud LU85 I use in my tablesaw.

[Jim Allen]

As an aside what blade do you use with your RAS?

This is what I use:
http://tinyurl.com/y7rge8oj

[Darcy Warner]

Just picked up a little dewalt mbf on the original roll around metal cabinet.