I have a Craftsman RAS, purchased new in 1980 and recently upgraded with the new guarding/table from Emerson Electric. As many know it has poor repeatability when the detent is used to return to the 90 degree position. So I am trying to figure how to simply lock it for a 90 deg. crosscut and leave it there. Seems it would require some sort of external bracing to be added. There seems to be too much flexibility in the column assembly to rely solely on it. By the way, for now I have simply calibrated it carefully, filled the table groove with joint compound, reversed the fence and made a brand new “reference” cut and groove. I use those to verify the saw is aligned to 90 deg.
Has anyone modified/improve such a saw? Any suggestions?
Replies
I have two of the RAS that you are refering to and the best thing that I ever did was to add the laser guide to them . It makes aligning a whole lot easer. when you have them where you like then tighten the adjustmend screws to take the movement out of the tower.
knothole
Thanks for the idea. I hadn't thought about adding a laser. I guess this is an after-market item. Where did you get yours?
I bought mine from Laser-Kerf online
Joe
I ordered the one that I have from Eagle America, about 60$ The big trouble is that the batteries do not last long. After you have the saw set up to cut like you want it you can take it off.
I think you can also order one from sears as the ones that they have on there new saws will retro fit.
knothole
CR,
If you're interested in using it for ripping, you can probably achieve comparable results just a safely with a chainsaw or an axe, or by juggling live hand grenades with the pins removed.
As to using a Craftsman RAS for precise woodworking, I found the best solution involved using a length of heavy chain with welded links to assure it could safely be hoisted overboard in deep water.
In all seriousness, I had a Craftsman RAS years ago. They're best used as you describe - left set at 90-degrees - for cross-cutting rough lumber: keep your elbow locked, to resist the tendency of the blade to climb across the lumber toward your waiting flesh, and pull the blade through the work s-l-o-w-l-y by rotating your torso at the shoulder.
Good luck,
-Jazzdogg-
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell
I have debated with myself about a SCMS - whether to buy a 10" one or maybe a 12" but no slide. Neither has the span of a RAS though. So I have been thinking about making the Craftsman RAS more rigid.The issue with the saw is repeatability. Accuracy is not so important because I can use a protractor or bevel to set the angle I want. The real problem is that you cut a piece and then a little later cut another and it is not the same, because you have bumped the arm - or if you cut along an edge the arm is forced off the setting.So I could try to make the arm stay put by adding struts that go from the top of the arm (near the on/off switch)to the wall, ceiling or to the machine frame (below the table). Seems to me that would be a lot stiffer than the column, which deflects with any little bit of torsion. So if the table is anchored to the building, and the arm also to the building, it should stay put.I was just wondering if anyone tried anything like this and if it worked.I do have a Delta 3 HP cabinet saw and good mitering fence, so I can work accurately with shorter lengths.
Covey Road,
I understand. With all of the challenges endemic to radial arm saws, I believe that all but the stoutest, most stable, models are best left to the task of breaking down rough lumber - at which they excel.
If you have a "Chop Saw" or a sliding compound miter saw, as well as a RAS, using the RAS will reduce the wear and tear on your other tools.
FWIW, I never cut rough lumber using my SCMS or table saw. Rough lumber is ripped at the band saw, and cross-cut at the band saw or RAS.
If you have a table saw, you can cobble together a very accurate crosscutting sled that will make precise cross cuts not only easier but safer than a RAS.
Good luck,-Jazzdogg-
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell
Sounds like good advice JD. I keep the RAS because it's a sentimental thing - had it for 25 years and bought it new for $299. On the other hand I still keep an old K&E slide rule I got in 1964, can't part with it - but then I pull it out and use it once every 20 years or so.
... .... .. _
Sorry, Covey Road, that's all the Morse code I remember ; - )
-Jazzdogg-
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell
Covey,
Careful with that mod your talking about, Craftsmen radial arm saws are so prone to going out of whack that if you anchored it to the walls of your home you might wind up actually twisting your house. Then you'd have to start fixing drywall, repairing the foudation, remitering all your window moulding, etc., etc..
In reality the type of saw you have is only good for roughing out stock to length, and be careful with it jumping at you like others have mentioned. I used to have one of these saws and I'm looking at buying a better one because of these kinds of problems. My recommendation is have a garage sale and do yourself the favor of buying a better saw.
Brian
You're right ... I have the sun setting nicely in my backyard right now and don't want it shifting somewhere else ...All and all, sounds like it's not worth the effort of time to try to make it better. I can set it at 90 degrees and have all those wimpy set screws torqued down, but it still can be bumped a half degree or so either way while still in the 90 deg. detent. My current approach is to make a clean new cut in the fence and groove in the table board (I fill in the old groove with joint compound) after first doing a careful 90 deg. alignment. That let's me "bump" it back to the same position every time.I'll use it for rough cuts as you say. In any case, the darn things were originally intended to use on job sites for carpentry work anyway.
I started another thread about which radial arm saw to buy and everybody is telling me to get one of these older industrial quality saws. Have a read over the thread and you'll get some good ideas.
The sunset is definitely worth more than the saw.
Good Luck,
Brian
You're lucky you can set your RAS at 90 degrees. I just added the Emerson upgrade and discovered I couldn't get it to line up at 90 degrees again. Apparently the set screws dug into whatever they were locked into over the years and when I reset the arm to the new fence, the arm slips back into the old grooves. In addition, the carriage moves from side to side as I cut through wood. As I remember, new bearings are frightfully expensive.
As to using a Craftsman RAS for precise woodworking..
I had one from the early 1960's.. It worker better en OK!.. Only problem was replacing that table I cut up!
My son-in-law has it now.. He has a metal cutting blade on it and makes car frames with it... Someday that motor will quit!
I have an old (pre 1980) Craftsman RAS. I have not had much trouble keeping it aligned although if I do have to rotate the arm to make a miter cut, returning it to a perfect 90 deg is "iffy". However, I can realign it quickly with a framing square against the fence. One disappointment with the RAS is the difficuty in ripping boards. I eventually resorted to the TS for all ripping operations.
That sounds like a bad idea. If you bump the base of the machine or the table it will still get knocked out of allignment. And the walls of your shop are not as stable as you probably think, unless they are concrete. Try tightening the collum adjustment screws untill the arn is locked in place.
Mike
I loved my old Crapsman, and had a similar saw, but the motor burned out. I had the electronic read out, which was pretty frigging cool, although like you I found it needed calibration constantly. I know of no way to improve the design.
I can tell you that I had to re-calibrate it monthly, and if my memory serves me right, it had four cheeezy allen screws at the rear of the back verticle post which locked in (sorta) the swivel arm. If I got a little exhuberant with the saw and forced it, it would go out of alignment; If I dared to move the arm to mitre, it would go out of alignment. Sigh.
The only way I know of to deal with this is to keep it at 90 degrees and use jigs for miters, like a piece of plywood sawn to 45 degrees for picture frames. Lay the piece next to it, and cut. I would also suggest some pieces of plywood ripped to exactly 90 degrees to layout the arm swivel. I got pretty good at calibrating it, and it would only take a minute or two. Those 4 allen screws often caused the arm to move one way or another (I think by design), so I would have to slowly torque them down and check the alignment with my jig piece.
I love tools, but really ended up disliking that saw. The arbor wasn't long enough to accomodate a full three quarter dado, and with that and the re-calibration, I was glad the motor burned out.
I got a $300 used DeWalt built in 1948, refurbished it, and love this saw. It has a preset 90 which is adjust by yet again 4 allen screws, but for some reason, this saw holds the calibration for months and years, not days and weeks like the Sears.
Regards,
Boris
"Sir, I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow" -- WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
Improving a Craftsman RAS .. I'd get a good cabinet saw...
Ya folks ever notice.. God and good almost the same?
Setting up a craftsman RAS is easy, all it takes is patience and time, and a bunch of visualization, and it ain't no different than any other RAS.
But 1980???
well, you didn't mention it, but after 25 years, you'd be strongly advised to replace the bearings on the arm tracking carraige. Even if yu think they are OK.
I bought mine a few years before you did, and I believe I'm on the 4th set of bearings now. So to my pea-brain, yer well past the point of rationality of "acceptability". This is the de-facto starting point. Even if you feel that these bearings are "OK", you can step through the whole process of alignement only to have to do it again. Trust me, 25 years is way past the life expecancy of those bearings.
A RAS saw has not only the detent for locking the post at 90, but also the tracking of the saw carraige to worry about. And it is perhaps more consequential if it is not correct
Yer gonna need a dial indicator. 20 bucks will get you a dial indicator from an improter which , while it ain't a Starret "last word" indicator, will suffice for a RAS.
You clean the rails squeaky clean, replace the bearings and you got a saw carraige that slides ever so easily.
If those rails ain't clean, you got bumps on em from dust and debris,you gotta clean em. and cause they are only 4" apart, and the bottom of the blade is roughly 18" below em, any bump or debris on the tracks is gonna get magnified about 4X. maybe even more .Consequentialy, any side force on the blade is gonna be magnified about 4x when it comes to thrust on the bearings and rods. Maybe thats why the bearings fail so easily.
Ergo, for a Craftsman RAS saw to work effectively, the tracks gotta be clean, the bearings good, and the blade tracking parallel to the tracks. And the blade has to be sharp and cutting linearly, it cannot have any skew to it. A dull blade may well "pull" to one side, and even when all yer ducks are supposedly in a row, a dull blade may defeat the whole purpose of the 'alignment' excercise.
Use yer dial indiator to see if you got any skew to yer blade . If there is a variance of a few thousands of an inch from the front of the blade to the back of the blade as you pull it past the dial indicator, yer blae is skewed. (Duh, the sucker better be unplugged eh- no spinning blades allowed at this point)
You can adjust (methinks) the skewedness of the carraige by adjustment of the eccentric bearing holts. Be patient , your choice here is to be fast and sloppy or to take yer time and be accurate. For them what ain't adjusted stuff like this before, it ain't unusual to have to re-step through the process of alignment several times.
Anyway, impatient or patient, yer blace has to be tracking parallel to the arm.
So now blade is hopefully tracking parallel to the arm.
Methinks that the rest of the adjustment lies in the bed.
Make the arm perpindicular to the bed with the bed adjustments. (set screws or thubscrews on either side)
Make the tracking parallel to the surface of the bed with shims, front, back etc),
Make the blade perpindicular to the bed with shims on either side.
and once you've done all that, next time someone asks you to borrow yer RAS, remember yer gonna have to go through the whole shebang again to get yer RAS tracking accurately again.
You replace the bearings, and tighten em up so that they are tracking tightly. Put a blade on the arbor and that sucker should be stable. No slop. Use yer dial indicator to show it, Plug it in, do a test cut to check it outl
Maybe I'm just obsessive, but the detents have in my experience been the least source of variance. In my exerience, before you look for other defects, you gotta have new track bearings installed. Without that, any measurements of slop or deviance in tracking are meaningless. Any efforts at alignment are wasted efforts.
Those bearings are the first option to correcting slop in a craftsman RAS in my opinion.
After that, it is the skew of the blade.
then it's all bed adjustments.
and once you've invested several hours in getting the sucker square and true in all the various degrees of freedom allowed for adjustment, make sure it is fixed and attached, so that if you move it, you don't have to go through the same visulaizational and conceptual gymnastics to re-true it again. Move it once, and all it takes is a slight torsional twist in the RAS base to require that you have to do all this crap again.
But don't even think of going beyond the idea of something is not correct without changing those bearings, especially after 25 years.
Anyone wanna agree (or disagree?)with me?
Just a lot of degrees of freedom to worry about. And if you want it to cut true, you gotta worry about them.
My site equivalent of the RAS is an 8" SCM saw, which takes up about 1/4 the space, is 1/4 the effort to man-handle, and the blades are cheaper, and it fits in the truck about 1/8 easier that a RAS, and doesn't need re-adjustmnet after moving.
Trubble is it don't accomodate dado blades, is limitied to a 12" cut, and doestn't rip worth a sh*t.
Eric in Cowtown
Eric everything you say sounds right on. I have not changed the bearings and do have the "bumps" when I slide the carriage, so I will get on that. I have a contact gauge and will check the skew as you mention.
The steps you give are correct (though abreviated a lot, for good reason). However it is a waste on a light duty saw like the craftsman or newer Dewalts. Ok, not really a waste, but it damn sure wont hold its setting for more than a couple of projects.
Mikeplease excuse my spelling.
I had the same saw purchased new in 1980 so I felt your pain. It was really only good for roughing cuts. The best improvement I ever made to this was to sell it 12 years ago and replace it with a compound miter saw.
Covey,
I had a similar saw that was given to me by my father in law. The best modification/improvement you can make is this:
1 gallon gasoline
1 match
OR:
Substitute 8 oz. C-4 explosive for gas and match
I wouldn't put bearings and all the rest of that crap on it. You will be disappointed that you wasted your time.
Birdseyeman (My real name is Lee, in case anyone is offended that I used a fake name. Except now everyone knows my real name and someone will probably come to my house and kill me.)
The saw isn't very sturdy, that's true. After reading all the comments, the idea I got from a forum comment somewhere a few weeks ago seems to be best. That idea was to fill in the table grooves with sheetrock joint compound, make a fresh cut through the fence and fresh grooves in the table board -- after first carefully adjusting the saw to 90 degrees and locking it in place.Once this is done, the groove and fence cut make good alignment marks and the saw carriage can be rechecked at 90 degrees by moving the stationary blade along the groove. If it is off a bit it can be nudged back. I have found that at full carriage travel the blade can be bumped about 1/32 each way, a fairly big error. But unless you are cutting along the edge of a piece of hard maple (not the right way to trim anyway) then the blade stays in position during the cut.I thought about the laser someone suggested, but I don't see that improves anything over the groove/fence cut approach, except that the laser lets you cut from a small pencil mark rather than having to sometimes mark up the piece with a combination square.
I saw that post about using sheet rock compound also. I don't like the idea of using a good saw blade to cut joint compound. Even after the initial cut small amounts of that stuff will shave away and dull the blade. Not to mention contaminating the lumber. Again that is just an observation.
Mikeplease excuse my spelling.
True, the joint compound is abrasive and you could use plastic wood. On the other hand I guess there is probably just as much abrasive effect in cutting a couple of MDF boards.Another way to do this is to use an auxiliary table board. After I did the Emerson guard upgrade and got a brand new MDF table board (wow, all free, 20 years after original purchase!), I bought a piece of 1/4" MDF as an overlay. It is stapled to the main board so I can later remove it and turn it over or replace it. The staples, of course, are sunk below the surface and then marked clearly so that I don't saw through them.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled