Circular saw safety

Thanks Big All
I was meaning mitre saw as opposed to a table saw for my
needs, I was just wondering if they now had the power to drive such a draining tool. Most of my stuff is Bosch anyway
so I was hoping they would launch a version and I wouldn't need to buy batteries & charger again.
 
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You never know, they might do it for trade use where we require 110 volt - it would depend on whether or not they could arrange it to deliver "centre-tapped" 110 volts or not
 
What got me looking for kickbacks on you tube was my new Makita track saw kicked back on me on a test plunge cut and it could have been really nasty, the only thing that saved me was the spring mechanism flipping back over the blade.

I had the saw off the rail and was doing a freehand plunge cut in a scrap worktop on the workbench, I brought the blade down gently and it cut in a bit and I guess I must have twisted it and it jumped back at me.

I admit I hate using circular saws at work but I see no reason to use this off its rail again unless I know exactly what I did wrong.
 
JayJay1978 said:
What got me looking for kickbacks on you tube was my new Makita track saw kicked back on me on a test plunge cut and it could have been really nasty, the only thing that saved me was the spring mechanism flipping back over the blade.

I had the saw off the rail and was doing a freehand plunge cut in a scrap worktop on the workbench, I brought the blade down gently and it cut in a bit and I guess I must have twisted it and it jumped back at me.

I admit I hate using circular saws at work but I see no reason to use this off its rail again unless I know exactly what I did wrong.
Click to expand...

Plunge saws aren't designed to be used without a rail. It's that simple.
 
In that case why do Festool and Makita both offer rip fences with their plunge saws? Also Hilti sell one of the heaviest plunge saws out there, the 230mm blade 1800 watt WSC85, a saw I'm familiar with as I've owned one for a few years now.

I suspect that the reason for the kick-back may have had something to do with blade sharpness and/or plunge rate. Even when mounted on its' rail my Festool will tend to kick back when plunged too quickly or when the blade is really dull. If the motor hasn't run up to full speed (and this is true of both the TS55 and the SP6000K) and you attempt a plunge cut it is a lot more likely to kick back as well. Never had any problems when plunging steadily with the motor fully spooled-up, though.
 
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Thanks big all
That's the sort of thing I am looking for only a bit smaller
a guy at the tool shop said bosch were going to be bringing
one out but that was 6 months ago and I haven't seen
anything yet.(n)
 
also if you are doing a full depth plunge to say 40mm you will have up to 100mm off teeth in touch with the work with the first 50mm off teeth tending to pull down or push back on the blade
where as the back off the blade will have a definate tendancy to climb back and out off the slot more so at the bottom off the plunge where the plunge arc is 95%down and 5% forward
also remember when you start to get kickback the front half off the blade that's giving down push will now stop cutting and pushing down whilst the back off the blade will try to "Roll up and back" if the resistance is less than the teeth gripping
 
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JobAndKnock said:
In that case why do Festool and Makita both offer rip saws with their plunge saws?
Click to expand...

It's not clear to me what you mean by 'offer rip saws with their plunge saws' but I will mention, the festool has a riving knife, the makita doesn't. As you look at the saw blade side (not to tell granny how to suck eggs) the blade rotates anti clockwise, it becomes obvious what direction the saw is going to travel if the blade does bind. It's no coincidence that there's a rail mount lock and clamps offered with the rails.

Does that mean you can't free hand plunge cut? Not at all. Does it mean you should? The topic of this thread is the answer to that.

I get it mate, you've been there, done that and got the shirt to match. :rolleyes:
 
Yes you can cut to within 18mm of a skirting board which is handy but you wouldn't have the rail involved surely.
I'll stick with my Bosch 10.8 circular for that, its a dream to plunge.

I got the rail saw for kitchen projects as I'm sick of dodgy cuts on worktops, it did a fantastic job of a 900mm breakfast bar, absolutely flawless cut.

I was told you can cut the bottom of a door in situ with these? Really? I don't see how it can get to the extreme edges without cutting the casing.
 
if you prop open the door to 90 degrees the door is now open at the lock end and at the hinge end you have about 4-6mm back and 40-50mm off the end off the door before you hit any timber
so set the teeth 2mm deeper than the door thickness and just stop after the bottom falls off
or plunge in carefully at the start working out where the blade position will be when plunged to depth and start a half to an inch back from that point
 
SammyInnit said:
It's not clear to me what you mean by 'offer rip saws with their plunge saws'
Click to expand...
Sorry, it was a typo - corrected to read "rip fences"

As you say the Festools and the Hilti have retractable riving knives, whereas the Makita has none - but at the point of plunging NONE of these saws (or any other plunge saw on the market) would have any form of riving knife in the kerf - even on the models with a sprung riving knife the knife can only enter the kerf after the saw has been plunged and moved forwards a short distance (about 30 to 50mm). The plain fact, though, is that any saw plunged into a material such as wood will have a tendency to push back at you. Experienced plunge saw users know to set the material depth of cut to the minimum required and will often not attempt to make, say, a 44mm thick cut off the end of a door in one pass, but rather take it in 2 or 3 passes. They generally have no difficulty in gauging the plunge rate and adjusting their speed accordingly - I've found it's the tyros who try to plunge too quickly and/or too deeply and/or without letting the blade run up to full speed. It's maybe worth mentioning that the denser the material being cut the more likely it is for a kick back to occur; really hard/dense materials such as Perstorp or Corian need to be cut with an appropriate blade and a fair degree of control (i.e. limited and small increments in the depth of cut for each pass) to avoid initial snatching and edge chip-out

SammyInnit said:
Does that mean you can't free hand plunge cut? Not at all. Does it mean you should? The topic of this thread is the answer to that.
Click to expand...
Should? Sometimes it's a case of having little choice, but one thing I will say is that when I've needed to cut out a section of 150 year old rock-hard pine flooring of indeterminate thickness and possibly with embedded ironmongery in the past that I was far happier doing that sort of thing with either my trusty Hilti (weighs a ton, but 1800 watts of motor) or doing a manual plunge with a basic conventional portable rip saw than I would be with a plunger such as the TS55 or SP6000K, both of which are relatively underpowered for the task (and underpowered saws always seem somewhat more prone to kickbacks). I will also say that a TS55 with the rip fence can be a bit of a handful (PIA) to use as an off-the rail rip saw, the sighting of the cut on them is really pretty awful, they keep trying to push themselves out of the cut (so absolutely need a two-handed grip) and that as a result even though I have a rip fence for my TS55 I almost never use it. TBH for "freelance" cuts in many materials I think you are hard pushed to beat one of the newer generation of brushless cordless saws (even if "hand plunged") - far better at the task than a TS55 or SP6000K could ever hope to be
 
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