Finished up these two saws today and sent out a couple kits yesterday. Its nice to get some shop time in!

Curly maple handles, one saw 10 inches long, the other is 12 inches long. I was specifically asked to send them with the handles unfinished. Customer has a particular dye he wishes to use. But he did promise to send pictures.

With my brass finally here I was able to get a couple kits together and install the backs on the two saws I’m building.

While waiting on brass hardware for saws to come in, I’ve been working on a couple of tool carts for my RAS’s. Picked up a second one, a nice 1030ra.

Carts look great! Later I’ll do the drawers, and the plan is to paint them to match my workbench. 30 inches tall, 37.5 wide and 27.5 deep. Both saws fit perfectly and the wheels are double locking 4 inch casters.

I sharpened a D-8 today. Needed a little extra jointing but wasn’t too bad. The interesting one was a NOS Stanley. Early 90s I think but it looked and felt pretty good in hand. Customer specifically wanted it retoothed from crosscut to a rip. He even told me he knew it was in amazing shape, nice sharp teeth but he wanted this filed rip 5.5 ppi at 6 degrees rake. I was almost sad to retooth it, but it came out great and I hope he enjoys it.

As the title says, I used my radial arm saw today for a quick project. Aside from test cuts, this was its first go. Checking with a square, the cuts are perfect.

On another website I read a post that summed up the “dangers” of this saw pretty well. In a day and age where you can go buy a tool off the shelf and use it 5 minutes later without any training, an old tool you just picked up used could be dangerous without proper training. Back when these were popular and first coming out we had people to show us what do. These machines were also factory fresh and all aligned.

Any power tool is dangerous. Tablesaws cut off fingers and send boards threw the wall all the time. When I was 19, fifteen years ago, I bought a cheap tablesaw and immediately went to use it. A board flew over my shoulder and I never touched one again until recently. Now, after watching video instructions, I know I messed up somehow. Sadly I see a lot of videos where they might check the blade is square but they don’t use a guard, a knife, or double check the fence us parallel. Or they reach over blade or decide not to use featherboards or push boards. But yet we are quick to say operator error and not blame the machine. Which is true but why do people blame the machine and not the operator on a radial arm saw?

People have been buying these used for decades without learning their new toy in and out. Tune it back to factory specs, use the CORRECT blade, use the guard like its supposed to be used, use the anti-kickback pawls. These are usually missing so find one or make one. And if ripping, make a push board. I highly recommend looking up Brian Weekley’s youtube videos and the Northern Workshop videos. Very detailed.

I mostly take in old saws and clean, repair and sharpen them in my spare time. When I can I also make a few saws as well as sell folded back kits. Currently working on a two saw order. Open handles, curly maple. Beautiful figure on these, can’t wait to get them finished.

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.

It’s nice to be back in the shop the last couple of weeks. I got a saw about to ship out and I cleaned up a tenon saw recently and got it out too. I picked up a new toy I’ve just about finished setting up. I’ll post about it tomorrow.

I’ve never made a website before and its nice to have a place to share my pictures and have a place where people can see what I offer. It’ll be alot easier to share a website link than uploading pictures and explaining things again and again. Setting this up during Thanksgiving break. With Christmas break coming up I know we will be visiting family here and there. When things settle down I’ll get some new restorations posted.