In spare time the last couple of weeks I’ve been cleaning up a 1949 dewalt radial arm saw. Its a beautiful tool thst once cleaned, aligned and adjusted, cuts beautifully.
Before you say its dangerous, hear me out. I gave it a chance because of my shopsmith.
I have plenty of hand tools, planes and chisels for example, but I’m fairly new to power tools. I have some small things, bench top versions but nothing serious until I came across a shopsmith in March of last year. I wanted a lathe and for a 100 bucks on something I could roll in the corner I took a chance. I had read they were so so multi tools but decent lathes. Well anyways the more I used it and the more videos I saw I decided I liked it, a lot. There are a lot of haters out there that think its not so great but so far I decided it far out preformed any bench top versions I had. But the table saw seemed small and I didn’t know how to use it. I decided not to, put it on the someday list to learn.
After enough research you will find that shopsmith upgraded the table system, they knew it was the weak point. First the 510, then the current 520 system. Looked cool, looked awesome, but even used the new table version was on average 1500 bucks or more in my area. In November I found one for 600! Came with bandsaw, jointer, 6 inch sander and a bunch of other small stuff. The small stuff I sold to pay for it lol.
This thing is amazing, and solid and sturdy as a rock compared to the older version. I decided to start learning how to use it and I am very impressed. Sure its a pain to set up everything and move it around, but I don’t have the space to leave a dedicated tablesaw or lathe in the garage. Anyways, my point was that despite all the negative talk I gave it a chance and love it. So when I kept seeing radial arm saws for sale and also saw all the negative talk about them, I decided to do some research before going with what the internet said.
I’ll go more in depth in my next post on the radial arm saw.
Thousand Oaks Toolworks 