#a69 :: Radial saw grip

This handsome 31-year-old chunk of machined aluminum once belonged to a 1977 Sears 10-inch radial arm saw – the most fearsome power tool I have ever owned.

It rips, viagra dosage crosscuts, web bevels, miters – does just about everything you could want – destroying wood in a way that weakens the knees and liquifies the bowels of anyone who’s ever injured themselves with a power tool. I fear and respect it, in equal measure.

I bought the saw for $45 on eBay from an old pastor, who no longer needed it.

He had it built into a bench, so I was readying to build a bench for the same purpose (and worrying about whether I could build it perfectly square so the saw would always work accurately when I learned a bit more about it: The saw had undergone a safety recall at one point, and you could order a safety kit online – for free …

I ordered it, and it arrived in a huge box that contained an elaborate finger guard, a new pistol grip to replace this one, and – surprise – a brand-new table.

Once I rebuilt it with the kit, set up the table, gingerly tried out a few cuts (and set aside this handle as a keepsake), I got down to business.

The saw helped me renovate our basement into an art studio, savagely ripping two-by-fours and chipboard flooring panels with gusto, and spitting out an unholy amount of dust.

Late last night, as I sawed through a stack of five quarter-inch flooring panels, it started groaning and kicking out smoke as well as sawdust. The blade was getting duller by the second, I realized.

I needed to rip just … two … more … boards to finish surfacing my new workbench (I’ll post an elaborate build log on that little journey to obsession later) when the saw quit.

The blade froze. The motor wouldn’t reset start.

Punching the red reset switch had no effect. I couldn’t reset the saw by simply yanking and replugging the cord.

It’s dead. Guess I’ll have to unmount the motor and get it repaired.

But damn, the basement looks good.