Plus another £500 if you want the mobile saw base and right/left hand support tables, believe me......
TBH pretty much every sliding mitre saw I've owned or used over the last 30 years (and that's quite a few of the trade/pro models) has has a degree of flex in the arm (and the longer the crosscut the worse they are), plus as they get older they "acquire" slop in the pivot (cheaper ones have it to start with), and all of them suffer from detente wear - but in any case assuming that cast detentes are right is a waste of time in my experience, the laser cut ones like the DWs, Kapex and one or two of the newer Makitas are far more accurate not to mention that you can
see any wear because they are on he top surface. Another thing is that the bigger the blade, the more likely it is to flex in cut - especially if you are making one-sided trim cuts (where only one side of the blade is actually cutting). Of course hit a knot and eject it and the fence can be knocked out of alignment or even bent making for more alignment woes. So it's a bit of a conundrum. One thing I will say is that the trade models tend to be far better than the DIY models in terms of rigidity and accuracy, but even then they aren't perfect. I've not long finished a restaurant fit-out where we did a substantial number of mitre cuts on sapele box sections and mouldings (many at the capacity of the 12in saw) and for some cuts it was necessary to plumb and square the saw for every cut before setting the mitre then make tongue in cheek adjustments (that was on two nearly new Makita LS1219 saws, BTW) because the saws were constantly running out
TBH for bog standard joinery installation, skirtings, architraves and the like I just use a basic 216mm deWalt SCMS and most of the time the quality of cut and accucary is good enough - when it's not I tend to make corrections using rack of eye and a sharp block plane and I get there uite quickly (can't stand these kids we get who have to make 20 or more trim cuts to get it right). If I were doing picture framing or the like, though, I think I'd opt for a cheap power mitre saw and buy a guillotine to do the accurate trims (e.g. Orteguil or similar vertical guillotine rather than a cheap Chinese knock-off of the Lion trimmer like the one Axminster sells). But I don't think you necessarily wanted to read all this
dewalts are fairly good
my 712 is 15 years old now and still cuts without any give it has an adjustment but never needed to tighten it
Yes, but what size cross sections are you cutting? As you bet nearer to the edheof the "envelope" even DWs start to show signs of movement. To be fair you've long tended to see a goodly percentage of joiner-owned DW chop saws on sites which speaks volumes for what the trade thinks about them.
