Need recommendation for 10″ or 12″ NONSLIDING miter saw
skard
| Posted in General Discussion on
Hi all! I need a recommendation for a non-sliding corded miter saw, either 10″ or 12″ (non-sliding because I don’t have the space or the money, and I don’t really need the capacity.) I’d like something accurate and durable. Anything come to mind? TIA.
Replies
What are you going to use it for.
I don't really know how to answer. For cutting things? I would be doing mostly furniture, and I want something reasonably accurate, compact and not too expensive.
For years I had a DeWalt 12" miter saw that did a very nice job. I forget the model number. I like the slider better, but it was a good saw.
I had a 12" Dewalt; great machine that died when my brother in law let go of it... it dove off a sawhorse table onto the patio. That's what I got for "helping" on his deck. He makes my sister happy and feeds her so...
Another vote for 12" DeWalt. Model is D705-04. Mine must be 30 years old and still a workhorse. A friend has a 10" Makita of the same vintage that he is still using. As mentioned above, depends what you are using it for.
My Dewalt 12" has cut metal, been left in the rain, been used by multiple employees, thought it was dead, but just needed a new interior arbor washer thing (not sure what its actual name is). I call it my magic saw because it just cuts dead square, every time.
One more vote for the Dewalt 12”. I had mine for over 20 years then gave it to my son-in-law when I got a 12” Bosch axial-glide. The Bosch doesn’t need the room of a traditional slider but, unfortunately, is expensive.
I've used a 10 inch Makita for over 20 years. It gets used quite a bit and the only serious repair it has had was to replace a bent fence. I prefer Makita to the Stanley Black and Decker (S-Bad) products like deWalt since Makita is one of the few tool manufactures that isn't owned by one of the big conglomerates like S-Bad or TTI. https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/.
The last straw for S-Bad was when they abandoned the excellent Porter Cable 690 router. You can still buy them, but parts have become impossible to find. I've replaced it with a Bosch 1617.
True what Stanley Black and Decker did to Porter Cable.
Are you buying used or new? I purchased long ago a Hitachi 15" because it had the most capacity of any thing available at the time. I had worked overseas and had a slide saw built by Elu and it was a beautiful machine, all metal hammer finish, but it was not available in the US. B &D purchased Elu and did market a Elu slide saw here for a short time, same as the original Elu but now a all black plastic body. When B&D launched their professional line of tools nobody bought them because they were B&D and equated with handyman home owner junk. They owned the Dewalt name which they hadn't destroyed and converted everything to Dewalt in yellow plastic. In the time that they pulled their Elu slide saw for the Dewalt conversion Hitachi began marketing a slidesaw in the US ,so essentially beating B&D to the market. Then everyone else did.
I still have my 15" Hitachi and because I have a radial arm saw I haven't
replaced it. Anymore the footprint problem on slide saws is no longer. They
have the over /under versions and Bosch has a hinged arm version. These give
you all the capacity of the very long slide saws but in a much shorted depth.
You wont find them used cheap most likely because they are relatively new.
I looked to replace both my radial arm saw and my Hitachi with something
new, but, the Hitachi is highly accurate and the radial arm saw can do pretty
much anything a slide saw can do and some things a slide saw cant do, so so far I havent pulled the trigger. I think though I have probably tried everything available. I've used a bunch of different brands of miter saws and the Dewalt is as good as any and better than most. Dewalt, though maybe owned by an evil empire, does have very good industrial design! Used I think you can find a good miter saw very inexpensively on an auction site or Craigslist. Harbor freight makes almost exact knock offs of dewalt saws at about half the cost new. They do do some rinky dink features though that are much more substantial on the originals. I think you might consider capacity and a 12" is probably better, tilt two ways is a nice feature as well. In some ways the top down cut of a regular miter saw is, in my opinion, more accurate than the bottom up cut from a slide saw. The old Hitachi and Makita 15" saws are still out there though.
So far S-Bad hasn't ruined deWalt. I had a dw735 planer which was excellent, I only don't still have it because my current shop is in the house and planers are too noisy.
The other thing to watch with deWalt is to be certain it's really a deWalt product. I purchased a deWalt DXV10P shop vacuum at Lowes and when I went to get a replacement filter for it neither Lowes or the Home Depot had it. So I went to the deWalt repair shop in London to get one and was told that the machine wasn't actually a deWalt product, but was just something they had sold their name to, and was actually made by Alcon. I called them and found where I could get a filter. The vac is actually very good, but the S-Bad service and business practices weren't. And don't get me started on Stanley hand planes, they haven't made a good one in over 50 years.
My complaint about the Porter Cable fiasco is because I had two of them, one hand held plunge and one under the router table. Both have been replaced by the Bosch 1617 variable speed models which happily have holes in the base to take the PC 690 base plates, so my template guides and jigs aren't garbage.
You can't go wrong with DeWalt 12 inch. Have had mine for years and it always is accurate. Put it on a folding roll around stand because you will be cutting long stuff many times.
Thanks everybody!
It looks like DeWalt 12" is the consensus, but I need a little more specificity.
phantomtrapper recommends the DeWalt D705-04, but that isn't for sale anywhere I can find.
It looks like the current lineup of 12" non-sliders is:
DW716XPS
DWS715
DWS716XPS
DWS716
DW716
Anybody have any experience with these? Or any older models you can recommend? (And what's the difference between the DW's and the DWS's? It isn't obvious from the specs.)
Thanks again!
My DWS713 10" has worked well for me. The DWS715 12" is likely good.
They are both reasonably priced.
Hi skard My manual refers to DEC92 so I wonder if it is discontinued, or a minor change made it a different model #. Another possibility, I'm in Canada, I wonder if they had different #s for the same machine, depending what country it was sent to. At any rate, the make and size seems to be a clear favourite. Good luck in your search.
Just looking at sepaerate piece of paper with the parts list and it is also referred to as a DW705.
I have only ever used deWalt mitre saws. My current one is the big 12" slider, and it is indeed a space hog. If you want a slider that is better, Bosch do one which takes very little space and of course, there is the Kapex, but you did mention cost was an issue.
They are brilliant.
Mine will be dead nuts on 45 or 90 (assuming I have not got dust in the stops) even if I carry it about, drop it in a car, or basically abuse it in every way. Today I needed an 8 degree angle for some studwork. Dial it in. No need to check. Perfect fit.
I am sure that cheaper saws are fine where you have the ability to leave them mounted in one spot and especially where precision is not required.
Metabo makes a decent miter saw. Z-E-R-O dust collection, but a very accurate saw!!