"woodchucker" wrote in message
...
On 2/16/2014 2:36 PM, Bob La Londe wrote:
First off I want to say that I have been if not impressed certainly not
disappointed with most Ridgid power tools. I've had my Ridgid table saw
for 14-15 years, and I use it all the time. I use it for wood and
aluminum cutting and it does as good a job today as it did when I bought
it. I've got a Ridgid bandsaw, and Ridgid 1/2" drill in my service
truck, and Ridgid pneumatic framing nailer. All of them "just work!"
No issues. No headaches, and except for the bandsaw which I used a
different blade on were acceptable out of the box. All of them are
better than "cheap" tools, and to some degree better than some more
expensive tools like my extremely expensive Delta Piece of **** RAS
which I hate and almost never use. I have or have had other brands of
all of those tools, and without a doubt I am most satisfied with my
Ridgid tools. Certainly for the price. If I want a tool to
deliberately abuse I'll buy a Black & Decker, but I am about 95%
convinced for a reasonable price for a decent tool you can't go wrong
with a Ridgid.
Today I setup a Ridgid Compound Radial Miter Saw. Out of the box you
could plug it in and run it. Nothing to assemble, and all well packed
in a form fitting styro foam shell. I assembled a new miter saw stand
for it, and mounted the saw. (I am going to put my Ridgid chopsaw on my
old miter saw stand).
Then I opened up the manual and found where it said it was precision
adjusted at the factory. I smiled to myself and pulled a small
machinist square out of the tool drawer under my first little CNC mill
and proceeded to check it. The first thing I did was move the both
compounds out of zero and back to the stops. Then I engaged the locks
and started to check. I slid the square on the table and moved it over
against the blade. I had to check twice because light between the blade
of the saw and the blade of the square disappeared uniformly from top to
bottom. At first I feared I had slid over to aggressively and flexed
the blade, so I backed off and tried again making sure the based was
firmly on the table. As the blades approached the little band of light
between them winked out instantly over its full length. Wow! I was
kind of stunned. Then I did the same test between the fence and the
blade. That's a little harder due to the stick out of the carbide
teeth, but when I aligned the blade so two teeth lined up with the blade
of the machinist square they touch at exactly the same time. By that
time my wife who had helped me assemble the stand was paying close
attention as well. She said, "check it from the other side." Exactly
the same results. Not only is the fence already pretty darn close to
perfectly square with the blade at zero it is straight. This saw is
atleast 10X better than the old Hitachi I have been using for the last
18 years ever was. The Hitachi still works by the way if anybody wants
a cheap miter saw with steam punk looking repairs to keep it going. LOL.
Anyway, all of that was interesting enough, but the thing that really
got my attention was when I finally pulled the trigger. It has a soft
start like a lot of routers. I thought it was broken until it spun up
to speed and I made a couple test cuts. No jump or jerk. That will be
really handy when fitting trim in tight spaces. Then only error will by
the operators. No jump to move the stock. The last thing may be
subjective. It seems to cut quite nicely, but it does seem to me to be
a slightly lower RPM at full on than any similar saw I have ever used.
That surprised me. Its subjective of course although I guess I could
paint a white spot on the blade and break out the old optical
tachometer. Why would the blade be slower? Within normal machine
speeds I didn't think you could spin a blade too fast for wood.
(Obviously I'm not talking about running a 3phase motor at 400hz or
anything extreme like that.)
My biggest only initial complaint about the saw is the amount of plastic
on it. I knew that when I bought it though.
I didn't get to play with it too much though. As soon as I decided it
was another decent machine the wife started pushing me to haul it over
to the house to start cutting trim for some shelves we made yesterday.
She hasn't come back out to the shop, so I can only assume she is
happily turn sticks into sawdust with it.
---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus
protection is active.
http://www.avast.com
I'm going to assume it's a 12" blade, rather than a 10" blade, and that is
the reason it doesn't rotate so fast. It doesn't need to rotate as fast,
the tooth speed will still be faster than a 10"
No, its just a 10". I would have thought the same thing if it was a 12".
My passion lately has been metal machining and I am very in tune with the
difference in surface speed with different diameter cutters.
So I guess you are happy.
Atleast until the rose colored new tool glow recedes from my vision.
Too bad that saw requires 4 feet of space front to back... Hoping to win
the lottery and get a festool, since it has all around the best features
and best dust collection.
The space front to back isn't too bad since I can turn the saw to minimize
that when storing it. I only need that much front to back when actually
using it. I put it on a roller stand (lift one end to roll it around) so I
will be able to just push it out of the way like many of my other wood
tools. I do wish I had a roller base on my band saw. Someday I'll get
around to that.
The bosch is good but many complaints about not being perfectly square and
dust is less than optimal.. the lack of a laser (fixed type) is an issue
too. For that price it should have a good one. I use the laser for rough
cutting, I use my TS for fine cutting usually.
--
Jeff
---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com