Radial Arm Saw Techniques

Lets talk about radial arm saws and what can be done with them. The radial arm saw gets a lot of bad press about how dangerous they are, and they can be. But anything that turns on and spins a cutting blade is dangerous. I don't know for sure but I would bet that there are just as many fingers laying on table saw tables as on radial arm saw tables.

So what is a radial arm saw, it is a saw motor that is mounted on a rail above the saw table. This motor can be moved along this rail or arm, thus giving it very good cross cutting ability. The arm can be swung right or left 45 degrees making it very easy to make miter cuts no matter how long your board is. Think about it, you have a 2x6 board 12 feet long and you have to cut a 45 degree miter and all you have is a table saw it ain't going to happen.

OK so now you want to cut shelf slots in that new book case your making, no problem. Just mount your dado blade on your radial arm saw, lower the arm until you have the depth you want and saw as many slots as you want. Once again, you only have a table saw. You have a 1x12 by 6 foot long board and you need to cut six shelf slots, what do you think is going to happen, nothing good. With a radial arm saw you cut these slots in five minutes no problem.

These radial arm saw techniques allow you to do all of these cuts with ease. Let us look at a few other cuts you can make with ease. OK you are building a new deck and you need to cut 4 inch by 6 inch beams, just lay your beam on the table, line up your mark and saw. Guess what, your 10 inch saw did not cut all the way through, no problem, just roll your beam over, line up your mark and pull your saw through, that's it, nice clean cut. Same thing with 4x4s or any other beam you need to cut.

I bet you think by now that I hate table saws, not true, I love a good table saw, I have a very good one in my shop. Table saws are great for ripping narrow boards from wider boards, everything else that you want to do is hard and very time consuming and down right dangerous. We use our radial arm saw five to one over our table saw, every day its faster and safer. Say you need to cut 100 2x6 bird blocking, you clamp a stop block to your fence, lay your 10 foot board on the table, slide it to the stop and cut time after time until you have your 100 blocks cut fast and easy.

Lets look at safety, when you're making repetitive cuts don't let speed get the best of your judgment, don't lay your thumbs over the back edge of your board because you can end up one thumb short.