dennis@home wrote:


"Andy Hall" wrote in message news:4837d73b@qaanaaq...
On 2008-05-24 09:06:19 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
said:

In article ,
The Medway Handyman wrote:
a) circular saws are amongst the most dangerous power tools. Far more
dangerous than SCMS IMO.

A chop saw - or sliding variety - is about the safest type of
circular saw
you'll find. Very difficult to do anything stupid with it if you observe
the most basic safety rules.

Unless the guard sticks or breaks.......



If it sticks closed its safe.
If any guard sticks open you should stop using the machine, an open
guard isn't dangerous in its self so as long as you stop using it until
its fixed it should be safe.

Any guard can break, what do you envisage causing the breakage?
Even a top quality tool can have a broken guard and then it is as unsafe
as a cheap one with a broken guard.

I had a NuTool chop saw for a while. Only small capacity and not very
accurate, but it was ok for chopping studwork. However the guard was
flimsy and clunky in operation. The metalwork that made up the various
leavers etc was rather bendy and hence you could find various sorts of
odd behaviour in use. Sometimes it would prevent the saw plunging fully
giving a partial cut. Other times it would stick the head in the down
position requiring you pull it up to get it to spring back, and other
times it would foul on the work piece by not opening in time.

So generally speaking it was a liability, and you had to take great care
to not get careless with it when rectifying the various stoppages.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/