Which Compound Sliding Miter Saw to Buy?

[Jeff Fuchs]

I have a Bosch. It is accurate enough to make picture frames and with my dust collector attached it is really clean. I use it to break down lumber and I use it for accurate crosscuts.

[michael langman]

I bought a reconditioned ls1013 Makita from cpo to put in 7" wide plank red oak flooring in my living room. The saw had some alignment issues with the fence, because the clearance holes for the hold down bolts needed to be opened up. I think that is why it was returned and sold as a reconditioned saw.

The saw cut the ends of the flooring absolutely perfect for the job, once set up, and has been accurate for my needs in all these years.

That is cutting material up to 2" thick. Cutting wet 4x4 pt wood was not as accurate although it cut it no problem and was close enough for building a deck.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I bought the 10" Hitachi C10FSHC from Big Sky Tool, refurbished grade A. The saw seems accurate and repeatable. The weak point IMO is the fence. It's cast aluminum and had two problems. First i found that the sliding 'wings' were not perpendicular to the table. I was able to get them pretty close by clamping one side of the fence in a vise and twisting. I did complain to Big Sky Tool about it and they sent me two more fences. Neither was perfect but I'm happy. Reading the manual I discovered that Hitachi doesn't plan on cuts being made vertically, their instructions all say to lay the work flat and set the miter and bevel accordingly. The second problem was that there was a tiny misalignment between the two sides of the fence to where a board would catch if slid from the left to the right against the fence. I jointed a 2 X 4 to get a good straight edge then glued sandpaper to it. A few strokes along the fence got rid of the little bump so boards slide freely. The saw cuts as good a 90* cut as I can measure and I mitered a 2 X 4 using both sides of the table and when put together form as good a 90* joint as I can measure. Should I not have to monkey around with a fence on a new saw? Yeah, but for $138 for a 10" SCMS I can tinker a little. It was good enough out of the box for framing certainly and may have been fine for trim. I like to tinker sooo

Some of the reviews on Amazon complain about slop in the miter setting. Mine had a little, less than 1/4*. There's sort of a brake mechanism to lock the miter table in addition to the notches. The brake mechanism is adjusted by turning a hexagonal rod under the table extension. Once I tweaked that a little the miter table holds its position very well. I'm not sure how this saw would survive life in the back of a truck. It seems a little lightly built to endure that life being thrown around without losing its settings but I may be wrong about that. The upside to that it's pretty easy to carry for a 10" SCMS that will cut 12"+. The dust collection isn't perfect but it's pretty good hooked up to a shop vac.

Thanks for the review Curt. I mentioned this saw because I like the price vs capability potential. I like to tinker too, and figured putting one in the game with the finish carpenter crew or framing crew would be a good test. Those guys can find the weak link in any tool, and honestly it's kind of surprising how quickly they can do it.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Nope, this is false. Some of us do have stricter requirements than are not reasonably met by a SCMS even with extensive tuning.

Joinery in light colored materials with basic finishes are simply extremely unforgiving of small gaps.

Brian, no offense, you do beautiful work, but there is more than one way to make a good joint. Yes an OMGA is assuredly better than a SCMS, but as it is 10x the price and being completely immovable, it's not even the same class of machine and it darn well better be substantially better. Same with slider saws. Point is that the SCMS serves a valid purpose by being a reasonably priced way to accurately cut to what most consider perfectly acceptable precision. Not many of us are going to win the lottery and be able to financially support the quest for the ultimate shop cut angle though, so most are perfectly happy with a solution that is right enough for our individual work.

I'm perfectly familiar with stricter requirements and familiar with the super precision rabbit hole. There are several tool chests in my shop full of better measuring tools than what the machinists up the street use daily. They get used periodically in my shop for set up and quality control. Yes, I can get a good SCMS to cut repeatedly and accurately to tolerances that I find acceptable. My customers think so to, so I guess that works for me.

Funny thing about wood, it tends to change shape. I have an old project that lives in my house now, it was a pie safe that I built for my mother in law's cafe years ago. This projects intent was also advertising for me to drum up some customers, so I threw in some bells and whistles. It is a scaled version of a federal period secretary, with the upper being a glass display case and the bottom being drawers. It turned out well and served its purpose for her and I admirably. One detail on that cabinet though helps me keep this work in perspective. As people notice dovetails and I wanted the views, I joined the top of the lower cabinet to the sides with exposed through dovetails oriented pins out rather than the normal half blinds with the pins going the other way. I took care to make sure that the tails were flush with the side because I knew people would be touching it and judging my work. Over the years, wood being wood, that front corner closest to the camera, is no longer flush. The pins on that corner shrunk back in 1/64th or so. The joint is fine, the wood just moved.

That is the nature of the materials we use, so this feature helps me remember to think about where I devote my time in the search for accuracy. As sacrilegious as it sounds, tried and true construction techniques are developed to cover up places where wood moves. If I'd have used a half blind DT oriented properly on this, I'd have saved a couple days work and even if it did move it would never have been visible. The pursuit of precision is sometimes a waste of time.

[Brian Holcombe]

Nice work.

I am a one man shop and I specialize in joinery work.

For me it depended greatly on how much fitting work I wanted to do, or rather could afford to build into my projects. With a SCMS a joint fitted off the machinery is going to be showing light gaps, that’s not acceptable so now I’m fitting those joints each by hand.

The straw that broke the camels back, for me, was chair making initially, then shoji making, both of which exaggerate the time waste component of ‘fitting’. I decided after a couple of chair runs that joinery would fit off the saw in my shop no matter what it took. In my shop that meant the sliding compound miter saw found a new home and was replaced by a combination of Omga chop saw and sliding table saw and dialing them in accurately so that all machinery which references from end grain surfaces would be using accurate surfaces.

Wood movement is not a reasonable argument for increasing your fitting time, you still want joints tight when the project is built and blind joinery can be planned in a way that movement happens from the tenon shoulder out (draw-boring).

So, yeah you can do tight work with a minimal tool chest. I worked near entirely by hand for a number of years, but with the time component of fitting involved it made sense for me to dump the SCMS and move on to better.

They are not expensive on the used market, I paid a few hundred dollars more for my first Omga than I did the Kapex and it is a much better and far more reliable saw.

Both chairs and shoji have a narrow range of pricing for high quality work and wasting hours and therefore reducing the profit with fitting work seems like a poor financial decision to me.

[Matthew Hills]

I have an Makita LS1016 on a bosch gravity-rise stand. I like the saw pretty well -- good capacity, and the makita blade that came with it left a very good quality cut. I haven't used the laser too much (or on my previous drill press). I don't have dedicated space for it and dust collection is annoying, so I normally leave it folded up and tucked away somewhere. It gets used primarily for household/carpentry projects and also for breaking down boards, particularly for long boards that aren't convenient on the tablesaw. If just a few cuts, a handsaw does the job.

Most finish crosscuts are on table saw sled.

I have done a few picture frame miters on the miter saw that came out fine. You will want a zero-clearance backer for really clean cuts, and do need to be thoughtful about forces during the cut.

Dewalt shadow-line feature is supposed to be pretty good.

The Kapex was interesting for pretty good dust collection, minimum space behind the saw, and people seem to like the hold-down clamp pretty well (makita's is nothing special). Laser is reported to be more useful than on other saws.

Every saw I ever saw on display in borgs was pretty wrecked (almost as bad as the handsaws they have next to the miter boxes in the moulding sections)

Or start doing your cuts by hand in your bathrobe -- its the first step on the journey to ending up with an OMGA...

Matt