In article , Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet wrote:
On 8/7/2011 2:51 PM, Doug Miller wrote:

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.

True enough, but it's also true that the primary purpose of a RAS is
crosscuts, not ripping. I haven't ripped even one board on my RAS since I
bought my first TS.

So that is probably why most every one would prefer to never use one.

I can easily understand preferring to never use one for rip cuts if a TS is
available. Never using one for crosscuts is a bit harder for me to understand:
that's what it was designed to do.