How many of you don't have a permanent Miter Saw station?

[paul cottingham]

Had one. Got rid of it and the mitre saw. Bought an old stanley 250 series mitre saw. No power, very humane.

[William C Rogers]

I have two. I have a Ridgid 12" on a mobile stand and a Milwaukee 12" slider on a permanent stand. Don't really need two, but it's what I have.

[Garth Almgren]

My miter saw lives on the floor behind my table saw and comes out when I need it. Most of my crosscutting is done with the RAS which takes up it's fair share of floor space.

[Larry Copas]

I had a Bosch SCMS which I used a lot when I built a couple of shops, and two houses. It was used on site with a shop made dedicated bench. I think my shop and house building days are over so the saw became permanent in my shop. A few years ago I added a sliding table to my Unisaw. That did all of the duties of the SCMS so I sold it and recovered a lot of space. The sliding table addition to the Unisaw was one of my better shop ideas.

[Dan Rude]

I have 2, no permanent home yet since the shop is under construction. The 1 I am using now is my little C-Man 7.25 w/box to catch the dust. Limited size but it's much lighter than the delta 10". Stand is either a ketter bench, a porta stand or a table. What I miss is a long table for board cutting. Dan

[Eric Schmid]

I have always had a dedicated miter station as a lot of the work I do is with long sticks of dimensional lumber. I also have need for a lot of cabinetry for storage and organization of tools. I just combined the two and the miter station sits in the middle of a long bank of upper and lower cabinets. The floor space is already lost with the lower cabinets, so why not put a miter saw on the table. Mine happens to be huge, so it can also be used as a work surface.

Miter saws are great for production work, but unnecessary for custom runs. I recently set up a sled for the table saw that I used to cut tenons on 5' long 2x6. Since the sled was already set up, I cut the boards to finish dimension on the table saw as well. It went smoother than expected. That said, I do a lot of projects where I need dozens of pieces cut to the same length, so I won't be giving up my miter station any time soon.

Several years back I picked up a book on workshop layout, Great Workshops from Fine Woodworking. It's filled with layout solutions for all sizes and shapes of shops. One idea from this book that has worked for me in my last two small shop setups is to keep as much equipment as possible in the same plane. My current shop is narrow and long, so the co-planar thing is really important. I've got a miter saw, router table, table saw and jointer in the same continuous plane. The operating space that the tools require can overlap for a much tighter layout.

[Alan Bienlein]

I guess I would consider this permanent but it's also mobile. It also doubles as an out feed for my surface planer and a support for cross cutting on the table saw.
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[julian abram]

I have a 12" Dewalt mounted on a Rigid Mobile Base. This setup was leftover from my house building days but still one of the most used power tools in my shop. Someday I'll take it off the mobile base and place on a fixed platform. Sometimes wished I had the 12" slider for the extra cutting width. Never want to work on projects without access to a cms.

[Russell Smallwood]

12" Hitach 12RSH on a rigid SUV which collects finishing supplies and dust. Wish I Had somewhere to store it until I needed it for the odd trim job etc.

That said, you'll have to go through me if you try to take my MBF.

[Gregory King]

Hard to make any tool permanent in smaller shops. I have the 10" Makita c/w folding stand. Extensions make it a breeze to fold up and move. Very sturdy stand. Greg

[Robert Parent]

My miter saw is on a workmate bench sitting in one of those metal frames with wheels used to make large tools portable. I would like to have a fixed location with wings on each side but just have not had time to build something. For now, the wheels are nice as I can pull the saw away from other tools when cutting something long. Really need to build a fixed station one of these days as the miter saw is one of the most used tools in the shop.

Robert

[David Nelson1]

I use mine outside primarily for rough cuts, but I did have a plan that included a permanent station. Since then things have changed more than a few times and I no longer think its feasible. The model attached would have had a the Biesemeyer tables I think one is 8' and the other 6' that would be removable for other work, that leaves with a storage problem and with 412 Sq foot shop that is packed already.... just dont see it.

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[michael langman]

I have my Makita 10" compound double sided saw mounted to a piece of melamine that is attached to a homemade collapsible stand made out of 2"x6"x 10' lumber. It sits off center in my small basement shop.
I have a 28"x32" router table, small 4" jointer, small table top9" bandsaw, floor drill, bench drill, tablesaw and benches along 2 walls with an L extension off one bench I use for working on.
Someday when I get the floor layed in the last room I may sell the miter saw and replace with a planer or good bandsaw.

[Greg Hines, MD]

I plan to build one with my new shop. Right now, I use one of those Woodcraft portable workbenches to support it, and a stack of foam insulation as the support table. I would love to have a new one (this one is a used Harbor Freight bought at a garage sale for like $10) that can live permanently. I really like Ron Paulks design off YouTube.

Doc

[glenn bradley]

The "yes" to "no" ratio is as expected. Like a RAS, the CMS can be a divisive topic. For what I do, neither tool is of enough value to warrant the footprint. I tried a very nice mobile base that folded up for storage. I still found that going through the setup for the few cuts I had to make still didn't warrant the effort. I do use my CMS (now relegated to the shed out back) once ever few years for trimming out a bathroom or something during a remodel but, obviously I do not do that for a living.

If you need fairly accurate miters or compound miters on the ends of long stock as a regular part of your work, a CMS can be invaluable. I cut miters on parts that have already been rough cut to size and 60" would be a really long and rare part for me. For simple cut-off work I use a jig-saw or a small circ-saw. For precision work of this sort I follow up with the tablesaw or bandsaw and hand tools.

Think about your frequency of use and look at the real estate required to make a miter station easily and sensibly used. If one warrants the other, you have your answer. If not, you still have your answer.