Quote Originally Posted by Frank Hagan
I had one, and liked it. I find ripping long, narrow pieces easier on the table saw, and plowing a dado along the length of a board is more accurate on my table saw than it was on my RAS. The reason was that the arm tended to move up as the stock was fed through, so I had varying depth in the dado cut. It died an ignoble death at the hands of a woodworker feeding melamine particle board through it .... I watched "helplessly" as the blade bound and, afraid to let go of the panel, took too long to shimmy around to where I could hit the power switch.

But, I'm a big believer that you play the hand you're dealt. I would go ahead and keep the RAS, and invest in other tools when you need to do a specific job: for plowing a dado, invest in a router and make a guide jig; for cutting sheet goods, consider something like the Eureka EZ (or whatever it is) or a Festool system (or a good circular saw and a guide jig you make).
I actually think the guided circular saw idea is a good one for any beginner who has a beginning shop; its not a tool purchase you'll ever feel sorry about, as you can always use it. And its much safer to use on sheet goods.

One of the things that you have to watch with a RAS is ripping ... pay attention to how you position the saw head. The saw head should be marked with lettering that says something like (DO NOT RIP FROM THIS SIDE) or (RIP FROM THIS SIDE). If you try to feed stock into the blade the wrong way you get a lesson in physics and a hole in a wall (if you're lucky).

And with sheet goods, having good infeed and outfeed support is necessary; think about how you'll get to that power button if something happens in the first foot of the cut, and you're standing about 8' away from it!
One of the things that you have to watch with a RAS is ripping ... pay attention to how you position the saw head. The saw head should be marked with lettering that says something like (DO NOT RIP FROM THIS SIDE) or (RIP FROM THIS SIDE). If you try to feed stock into the blade the wrong way you get a lesson in physics and a hole in a wall (if you're lucky).

Or in my case it went sailing out the door into the street. I was very happy that there wasn't a car going by at that time.

DK