On 8/7/2011 2:51 PM, Doug Miller wrote:
In aweb.com, "Lew wrote:

"Robatoy" wrote:

RAS should be O U T L A W E D ! !
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You want an argument, change the subject.

Cerritos college has ONE (1) RAS in the entire facility.

It's use is restricted to cross cutting rough stock to length.

Even that cut gives me the "willies"

Why should it? I've never understood the antipathy that many guys here have
toward radial arm saws. One person used to call them "radical harm saws" and I
truly don't understand why. It's just a case of using the right tool for the
right job. A radial arm saw is *not* the right tool for ripping (not the best
one, anyway), but IMHO it's safer than a table saw for crosscuts:

Well you may have answered your own question there Doug. While most
every one will agree that the RAS is not comforting to use in the rip
application, it is indeed built and intended to be used to rip material.
So that is probably why most every one would prefer to never use one.

FWIW I owned one for about 5 years and build a lot of furniture that I
still own today and did quite a bit of ripping with it. For me I had
more problems with it while crosscutting, probably because I did mostly
cross cutting but I never got used to cutting into a narley SYP knot and
the blade and motor trying to climb up over the board rather than cut
through the knot, for what ever reason. ;~)

Three years after buying it I added a contractors saw to my shop and
literally never used the RAS again.