Is a Reconditioned 13 Amp 7-1/4 in. Corded Circular Saw ok?

[FuryRoad]

Caution, while Milwaukee is one of the best tool makers available, I believe this model is one of the saws that requires multiple things to happen to get it to go. I'm not comfortable having to use 2 hands to operate the safety's and then have to quickly tickle the blade guard to get it over the edge of the board. Give the saw a good look over and try the safety switch and trigger, and see how the blade guard works before you buy it.

Thanks. I'm not sure I understand though. I will see if I can get the manual or a video.

edit: I found this but I'm not sure of any of the safety's working. I couldn't find it.

[mpc]

When you are comparing circular saws think about:
a) how comfortable the grip feels and how balanced the saw feels in your hand. Some poorly configured saws make you contort your wrist or have the handle so far offset that the saw is hard to control - i.e. the lateral offset leads to a turning force when you push the saw into the cut. Many times a circular saw is used to nip a little bit off the end of a board... basically the saw and board are overhanging sawhorses or your workbench. When that cutoff piece falls away will the saw remain balanced on what's left of the original workpiece or is the balance such that it will fall over? That's potentially dangerous. Think about your work area: saw horses, etc. How high are they? When "testing" the saw in the store, hold it at whatever height you think you'll be working at to check the wrist angles and comfort/control aspects. Then see how far you can reach (imagine trying to cut a sheet of plywood down the center to make two 4x4 panels - you have to lean a lot to reach) and what wrist angles result.

b) I look for saws with thick base plates - cast pieces instead of thin stamped metal or thin metal with folded edges. Why? When cutting full size plywood sheets on sawhorses it is common for the sheet to flex a bit. If you clamp a straight edge to the plywood to guide your cut... that flex in the middle of the plywood results in a small gap between the plywood and your fence. Thin base plates can slip into that gap, leading to a non-straight cut and/or binding the blade (bad). Or the saw might wedge into that gap. The flex in the plywood will be exaggerated by the weight of the circular saw itself. Even if the work is fully supported underneath the cut (laying four 2x4 boards across sawhorses parallel to the cut direction works well) thin base plates still find ways of hooking gaps. Many folks use a 2x4 as a fence ('cause they don't have anything else 8 feet long); 2x4s have rounded corners. A sloppy corner might be taller than some circ saw base plates. For some cuts - when you are following a line without using a fence - you'll see folks using their other hand to gently guide the base plate at the front corner opposite the blade side. Safe or not? That's another discussion... for folks that do this though a fatter base plate is easier to put your fingertips against. Thick (cast) base plates or stamped base plates with tall folded sides beat plain flat plates.

c) blade guards... ideally they rotate out of the way themselves as they bump into the edge of the workpiece. Most have a lever you can grab to pre-open the guard but, when you need two hands to control the saw, the guard has to be moved by the workpiece. I had one small saw long ago that tended to hook the workpiece with the guard - it HAD to be manually raised. I doubt any modern saw has this goof but it pays to check. Just take a small scrap stick to the store and hold it by hand to the display saw's base plate along side the blade... move it towards the guard and see what happens and how much force it takes to move the guard. A minor point: in the store, hold the saw and hold the guard fully open with one hand... how difficult is that to do? That's what you'll probably have to do while changing blades.

d) circular saws come in 3 basic styles: blade left, blade right, and worm drive. Blade left and blade right saws are mirror images of each other fundamentally. Blade left saws have the blade on the left side of the saw with the motor pointing off to the right. You'll hear people say they were intended for left handed operators. Blade right saws are more common and were intended for right handed operators. The idea being that, when you zoomed through a cut and then let your arm and the saw swing down after the cut, the motor & body side of the saw would clunk against your leg instead of the blade side hitting your leg. Letting the saw swing like that after a cut sounds dangerous/stupid to me in the first place: the tool isn't really being controlled. I'm right handed and I prefer a blade left saw simply because I find it much easier to see the blade and follow my line on the workpiece - I don't have to look over the top of the saw. When cutting sheet goods or other large objects it's hard to see over the motor and body of the saw for the entire cut - especially if your sawhorses or work table are at typical heights. Worm drive saws are bigger typically; the motor faces aft (towards the operator) rather than sticking out left or right. Worm gear setups connect the motor to the blade... and allow torque multiplication. So worm drive saws tend to be pretty darn hard to bind/jam and are favored by construction folks cutting thick workpieces. They're heavier and more expensive too... and probably overkill for most home woodworkers. A regular circ saw can cut thick workpieces too... just takes a little longer.

d) circular saws spew dust. Some have small ports for shop vacuums; this does help minimize the mess and the amount of fine dust floating in the air for you to breathe and/or to get into your eyes. I bought a Porter-Cable Mag series saw years ago because it had the dust port and the thick base plate and I could get it in blade-left configuration. I haven't regretted that purchase.

e) more minor things to compare: circular saws have two adjustments: depth of cut and blade tilt. How easy are the levers/knobs/whatever to operate for those? Depth of cut should be fairly easy to operate as you'll need that adjustment fairly frequently. Blade tilt isn't used as often so one that takes a little extra effort shouldn't be a deal-breaker on a saw that you otherwise like. It's hard to evaluate in the store but try to figure out how well the depth and especially the tilt features lock... some saws have mechanisms that can vibrate loose after a few cuts. SURPRISE! The tilt mechanism is typically at the very front or very back of the base plate. Thus there is a long distance between the mechanism and where your hand is applying force to the saw and where the blade is applying force. Weak structure in the mechanism, or a too-thin base plate, means there can be flex in the cutting angle. That really sucks. In the store, hold the body of the saw in one hand and the base plate with the other and try flexing the base plate... test each corner. See how stiff (or not) it feels and compare to other saws. This is one way you can identify a truly cheap saw from a better design.

f) the blade opening in the base plate is usually pretty wide - to accommodate the blade tilt feature for bevel cuts. A side effect of any blade cutting through material is "tear out" - basically where the blade exits the workpiece (between the base plate and the top of your workpiece on a circular saw) the blade tooth may tear wood fibers upwards - into the opening - instead of making a perfectly clean cut. If that opening was only as wide as the blade then there would be support for wood fibers which reduces tear-out. A common trick to almost any saw (circular saw, table saw, jig saws, etc) is to create a "zero clearance" plate. Basically this is a thin piece of wood or plastic that is attached to the saw's base plate... the saw is then turned on and the blade is "plunged" through the attachment to create an opening exactly matching the blade. The circ saw's base plate needs some method to allow this attachment to actually be attached - i.e. a few screw holes or have enough flat surface area for double-sided tape. The cut depth adjustment range of the saw must also allow for a "zero depth" cut - i.e. the teeth of the saw blade are above the base plate so you can in fact plunge into the attachment. Not all circular saws have this much adjustment range. For those that don't have enough range you can use two attachments butted against either side of the blade. These zero clearance plates have to be made for each thickness blade you might use and for each tilt/bevel blade angle too. Folks with table saws often have a collection of zero clearance throat plates for these two reasons.

mpc

[mpc]

The stuff other folks are mentioning about safety switches and what-not:

When you look at the saws in the stores, you'll see most have buttons or levers close to the main power switch. These additional buttons/levers are the safeties. It takes two fingers, sometimes two hands, to release the safety and then operate the primary trigger switch. The position of the safeties dictates 1 or 2 hands... as well as the size of your hands. I have a cordless circ saw (in addition to the corded PC Mag saw I mentioned in my prior reply) that uses a lever. Pushing that lever down unlocks the primary trigger switch. It's in the saw handle just above the trigger switch so I can reach it with my thumb... but the spring is pretty stiff so it's actually difficult to work. I have to eyeball it to work it - which means when the saw is first starting I'm not watching the blade which I think is a more dangerous condition. And this setup is one of the better safeties out there; I've tried others in the stores that required two hands for me to operate. That means my other hand isn't holding the workpiece or saw's front handle when I start the saw.

Some saws have a button that you can squeeze with the side of your thumb for a safety - instead of a lever to push down. Try them all in the store and see what you can comfortably handle and which ones take extra attention/concentration. Avoid the latter if possible.

mpc

[FuryRoad]

Thanks for that incredibly useful information. I know it took time to type it out. I went to the store, finally, and took all this into account. I found that only 50% of them even had a safety. I felt how heavy they were, the shoe thickness, etc. I kind of on the side of buying a lower priced saw and a higher priced blade. But, I do like the heavier, nicer shoes.

[JoeyGee]

I have a cheap POS Craftsman that's probably over 15 years old. I hardly ever use it. When I do use it, it's only for quick, rough cuts, so it's fine for that. I use whatever cheap blade I have on hand. I have HD or Lowes cut down sheets of plywood to manageable table saw size pieces. If I need cuts in 2x material, I use my miter saw or jig saw. My jig saw is much quicker and convenient for me.

If I were you, I would get the recon Ryobi you linked and put the extra money towards a good jig saw. A jig saw is much more versatile and good ones are very much worth the extra money. IMHO, circular saws aren't worth the extra.

[capncarl]

I wasn't aware that you could even buy a circular saw without safety's, although that isn't one of the things I let concern me much. I just figured the safety police had demanded it of all the mfg's. I would not recommend a saw without a 2 point safety for the simple reason you can turn it on when picking it up, not what you want to do! But I do recommend trying the saws to see if you are comfortable with the safeties.

[cwsmith]

I too was not aware that you could buy a circular saw without a safety... I'm sure there must be one on there somewhere as I'm pretty sure they are a mandate.

However, safety lock-outs or not it is the operator who needs to know 'safe practices' with any tool... power or manual. As mentioned earlier, I have two circular saws and my oldest one being a decades-old Craftsman does not have a safety lock-out. But, no one should ever pick up a circular saw (or many other power tools) with your finger on the trigger. (It's sort of like a firearm, you keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to use it!)

Similarly, one should never tie back the blade guard, though I've seen that done all too often.

The other 'safe practice' with a circular saw is that you adjust the blade according to the thickness of the stock you are cutting. The blade should protrude only about a quarter-inch below the stock. Yet I've seen even in videos, where the operator has the blade almost in its maximum depth position... sort of freaks me out. (Likewise, table saws should be adjusted so the blade rises above (through) the stock only to the bottom of the blade gullet (the valley-area of the teeth).

I'm right-handed, so for me most circular saws work well with the motor to the left of the handle and the blade on the right. In operation, I'm on the motor side and looking over the front to guide the cut via the marking on the saw's base. A few circular saws are configured differently with the blade on the left however. My Ridgid cordless is like that. When I got that tool, I never gave it a lot of thought, other than it was just different. But cutting a hole in my ancient attic floor (1887) I hit a nail and the saw kicked back on me... barely missing my knee which I was supporting my weight. That was too close for comfort and it brought to my attention quickly that the design difference of having that blade on the side that I usually operate from was a significant danger. I imagine that being left-handed and using a conventional design with the blade on the right would offer the same danger. I much prefer having that motor between me and the blade!

The other thing with circular saws is that blade guard... I like the metal one on my old Craftsman. That plastic guard on the Ridgid and many other new circular saws just seems a bit flimsy.... I've never heard of one breaking though.

Safety is only what you make of it I think. Too many of us don't pay enough attention and I'm a firm believer that with many of us, long years of using such tools makes us all too comfortable and sometimes a bit sloppy in our attention to the dangers. At 71, I've still got my fingers and no real lacerations... but I'm quite cautious whenever I use a saw of any kind. (I also don't rush or work when I'm tired or as too often the case, burdened with a bad headache.

Regarding Joey's comment about the jigsaw... I think we all have our favorite tools. I don't think I could be happy ripping any kind of stock with a jigsaw.... seems a bit slow and not really efficient at the task. I do understand tool preferences though, my favorite shop tool is my Radial Arm Saw, and I'm sure a lot of woodworkers would question my thoughts on that.

CWS

[JoeyGee]

I never said I would rip with a jig saw. I prefer to leave ripping plywood to one of the box stores or my table saw.

I recommended a cheap circular saw and a more expensive jig saw if it were up to me.

[cwsmith]

Sorry Joey,

Obviously I misinterpreted your statement, "A jig saw is much more versatile and good ones are very much worth the extra money. IMHO, circular saws aren't worth the extra." to be all inclusive of the many tasks in cutting wood, including reducing sheet stock or crosscutting boards wider than typical miter saws can handle.

I've only had my local HD cut sheet stock once for me... they did a terrible job, with the stock not being even close to the dimension I asked for. (At the time, I didn't have a table saw and had to rip the remaining piece on my RAS.)

My mistake,

CWS

[FuryRoad]

I never said I would rip with a jig saw. I prefer to leave ripping plywood to one of the box stores or my table saw.

I recommended a cheap circular saw and a more expensive jig saw if it were up to me.

I don't understand what you're saying you use the jigsaw for. Say I was making a planter or refacing a cabinet. Would you use the jigsaw for that?

[JoeyGee]

There are any number of uses for a jig saw that may or may not apply to a planter or your cabinet project. If you plan on future projects, uses for a jig saw will very likely present themselves.

My point in this thread is that I wouldn't put $130 into a circular saw when you can get one for $30. That would leave you money to put towards a jig saw...or any any other useful tool.

That's just my opinion.

Sorry if I was confusing or took the thread off topic.

[FuryRoad]

It's not off topic to me.