On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:31:19 +0000, The Medway Handyman wrote:

I don't own any kind of saw with laser guide, so have little experience of
them. I did have a PP/B&Q jigsaw with a laser, but found both the saw & the
laser useless, so I gave it away - lasers just confuse you on curved cuts
anyway.

On a circ saw or SCMS how do they cope with the kerf of the saw blade?

On my CMS it's narrower than the blade width, and aligns with one side of
the blade - e.g. with a piece of material:

-----x--y--z----

x-z is the blade cut and x-y is the laser line. If cutting from the 'other
side' I quickly got into the habit of offsetting by the blade width to get
the cut where I want.

Far as I recall from the manual, the laser position's adjustable anyway,
so I could set it however I wanted.

One gotcha with mine is that if the motor runs, the laser runs. There's no
way to control the latter independently, which is a bit stupid (I have to
run the blade to see where I'm about to cut). I'll see about putting a
manual switch in there sometime...

cheers

Jules