Great shop saw - even for the pros
Written: Nov 18 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sturdy, reliable, well-designed and inexpensive
Cons: The dust collection system.
The Bottom Line: At the price, it's very hard to get a better miter saw.
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| thorswolf's Full Review: Delta 36-225 Compound Miter Saw |
When the time came to set up a workshop, the first tool I thought of was a trusty miter saw. Heck, I'd finished the basement at my old house using one of those miter boxes and the amount of wood putty I had to use was beyond belief. Never again, I'd promised myself.
I did a whole lot of research and a few industry magazines recommended this saw. After having it for two years, I can see why. I had a maximum budget of $200 for the saw I wanted to buy and, at my local Home Depot, only two saw fit the bill, a Ryobi and the Delta 36-225. There was really no comparison. Even with the display model in the store, one could see the difference in build quality of both. The Delta felt sturdier, the action was smoother, the fence was better designed, is had compound mitering, etc. etc. (see below). SO I plunked my $190 ($140 US at the time) and carted it home.
Out of the box, the saw is ready to rock. It comes with a 60-tooth carbide tipped blade which is a nice compromise between the rough 40-tooth and the finish 100-tooth blades. It comes with two work surface extensions that help support whatever piece you're working on. These extensions slide right back under the table, leaving you with two nice transportation handles. There is an extendable support at the back to provide more stability. As an added bonus, this can be used as a handle to carry the saw around one-handed. Not sure if it was built to do this, but I've carried the saw around on many occasions in this fashion without any problems.
The blade guard is well designed and, in the full up position, you would be very hard pressed to reach the blade past the guard. The horizontal D-shaped handle is very comfortable to use and, in my mind, gives you better control of the blade than the vertical D-handles.
The 15-amp motor will happily chew through anything you may want to feed the saw without problems. Blade changes are dirt easy and the blade lock is a big help for the task. The saw has zero wobble (even after two years of fairly intense service) and it is fairly easy to cut a wide piece in two passes (although the miter adjustment handle can get in the way). The saw comes with a blade brake that stops the saw fairly quickly, but the innards of the saw need a fairly regular cleaning. The first thing to go is that brake when the insides are too dusty. A good cleaning brings everything back to normal.
The fence was dead on straight out of the box and I have not had to re-adjust it at all. The clamps that came with the saw are of little use (for me anyway) with the saw, but I did use them on my workbench and they do yeoman's duty there.
Whoever designed the table put some thought into it. I recently built a workbench in the unfinished area of my basement and decided to put a miter station. The saw table sits exactly 3 inches high. I was easily able to build a drop shelf for the saw to sit on. The rest of the bench is one 2x4 and a sheet of 1/2" plywood higher than then saw shelf so I now have perfect support for whatever length piece I wish to cut with readily available lumber for the construction of the workbench.
The miter angles are accurate, not laser perfect but good enough for just about any task. As an example, I finished my basement with round corner beads. When it came to adding baseboard and molding, I had to make little blocks cut at 22.5 degrees for these round corners. This setting is one of the built-in stops and it was very accurate for what I had to do. I required very little wood putty to fix gaps, and it usually was because my length measurement was a tad off. The angles were always dead-on.
The compound mitering head gauge is another story. The gauge is very plain jane and the angle is a little more off than I would expect from a saw that is otherwise a great tool.
There are very few drawbacks to this saw, but a big sore point with me is the dust collection system. The passive bag system only gobbles up about half of the dust, so the workshop can get real messy real quick if you're doing a lot of cutting. The throat of the dust collection system can get backed up fairly easily and it's something that needs to be checked. Once the throat gets clogged, the dust tends to hard pack in that area and, sooner or later, the blade starts catching in the accumulated dust. You can tell because the saw sounds different and the RPMs drop. If you leave this situation too long, the motor starts to overheat. This has happened to me on a few occasions, always when I was cutting plywood or aspenite. A saw this good should have a wider throat, or at least come with an adapter so that you can hook a shop vac to it.
I've seen this saw used on a few construction sites, so this reinforces my experience that this saw is a sturdy, reliable tool with very few drawbacks. What can I say, I love my Delta!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
thorswolf
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Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 1 member
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