Radial Arm Saw tooling

[brent stanley]

It's great to see a bit of a resurgence of the Radial Arm Saw with folks buying big old machines and putting them back into service. I have two of them, a 14" Wadkin BRA and a huge 18" beast that is in 100 pieces, slowly being brought back to life after decades of abuse at a post and beam factory. Another RAS owner I know had a custom block made for him for hogging away material when tenoning. Its actually a modified tenon cutter for the shaper. They make versions that are adjustable for width but are much more expensive and not necessary if you're just going to use it for hogging away material. Graule is a known RAS manufacturer and they ship their machines with the adjustable version if requested.

Here are pictures. The black one is 300mm x 31.25mm, Z4 dual shear, the grey one is 300mm x 50mm Z4 dual shear for use on the big 18" machine when it gets rebuilt. Of course these are chip limiting but even without that, have very limited inclination to climb and are easy to control.

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Like I said my big RAS is in pieces but the other is 1000 miles away till spring so I'll hand it on without any sawdust on it I guess!

B

[Tom M King]

Does the one from the post and beam factory have the hand crank feed? I've only seen them in pictures, but always wanted one.

[brent stanley]

Does the one from the post and beam factory have the hand crank feed? I've only seen them in pictures, but always wanted one.

Hi Tom, no it's a manual push/pull style like a giant radial arm saw. I hope I get it back up and running because it will be a tremendous help. The plan now is to set up my lathe and vertical milling machine and other metal working machines next winter and spend a few months off and on bringing it back to life. With something so powerful swinging so much mass, it needs to be tight and accurate! The 4 huge roller bearings the carriage rides on of course are not available anymore, but I was lucky enough to find 4 in mint condition in the UK that just need derusting!

B

[Richard Coers]

My favorite radial arm story. When I started my hobby woodworking in 1972, I bought a Craftsman radial arm saw and Craftsman router. One project required ripping off a long chamfer on quite a few boards. It was winter and my basement was cold. I wore a denim apron, flannel shirt, and t-shirt. Off fall started building up on the table from doing multiple boards. Suddenly one piece of off fall fell back into the blade and it was thrown at me. I looked down, and it was stuck in my abdomen. Deep gulp and I pulled it out. The piece went through all my clothes and just barely broke the skin. Just a tiny bit of wood and a great sigh of relief.

[Ron Selzer]

My favorite radial arm story. When I started my hobby woodworking in 1972, I bought a Craftsman radial arm saw and Craftsman router. One project required ripping off a long chamfer on quite a few boards. It was winter and my basement was cold. I wore a denim apron, flannel shirt, and t-shirt. Off fall started building up on the table from doing multiple boards. Suddenly one piece of off fall fell back into the blade and it was thrown at me. I looked down, and it was stuck in my abdomen. Deep gulp and I pulled it out. The piece went through all my clothes and just barely broke the skin. Just a tiny bit of wood and a great sigh of relief.

I tried to rip a small piece on the radial arm saw and it kicked back hitting me right below my right eye. Nice bruise, never ripped too small of a piece again on that saw. ripped small strips off of wide pieces since
Ron