Unfortunately, while there are far fewer RAS's than TS's, some of them
are pretty poor. The RAS also takes far more effort in setup and
alignment. When moving my shop, it took about an hour to setup the TS,
but most of a day for the RAS. OTOH, my particular RAS is stable and
repeatable, and gets a lot of heavy use. As with the TS, there are
methods and techniques, though they are less well known. For instance, a
marker strip at the front table edge together with a pointer rod allows
me to quickly swing the arm to any angle with nearly the same accuracy
as my Incra on the TS, and is just as quick.

For crosscuts and dadoes on large projects, it's much faster, and some
projects are nearly all done between the panel saw and RAS.

Still, it's not for everyone. Much more care is needed when ripping or
molding, and if you don't have the right techniques, guides and
holddowns in place, you shouldn't do it.

As for schredding your flesh if you're not watching carefully, I suggest
that, if that's possible, then you're doing it wrong, with the RAS, TS
or whatever. We've seen pictures of people cutting off fingers (or
hands) with a RAS, but never why the hands were there in the first
place. My same TS pushstick is used on the RAS, and my hands are far
away. There's no more reason to have your hands near a RAS blade then to
do the same on a TS.

As to the wobbling arm, I have to agree. Some are like that and, if you
can't fix it, I wouldn't use it. Junk comes in all forms. And few people
find themselves proficient with all tools, nor do they enjoy all
tools. Whatever safe and efficient method you develop for getting the
job done is always fine.

And 'light' is always good, too.

GerryG

Bob G. wrote:
I try to keeps things 'light'. There is enough heavy **** going on all
around us.
I appreciate your calling my comments a 'little' overboard. Others
aren't that kind.



Rob


=============
Nothing wrong with keeping things a little lite.... and I did honestly
think your comments were offered "tongue in cheek "...

Bob