Prepare for a major change in portable table saws. During the last few years, tool manufacturers have banded together to produce a new guard system for these saws, and Bosch is the first company to market it, on its new 4100 series saws. Trust me, this new system will change how we work.
With its aluminum wheel hanging beneath, the Roberts Roll-O Universal Knife looks like some hapless engineer tried to make a unicycle from a standard utility knife. But there's a method to this madness, and unlike some innovations that fall flat when they get out to the field, the Roll-O indeed...
When I began working in the building trades some thirty-plus years ago, carpentry tools fell into two categories: basic hand tools and simple electric power tools. I didn't start working with cordless tools until the mid-80s, when I bought my first 9.6-volt, 3 3/8-inch blade cordless saw–more of a...
In my snowboard manufacturing shop, we use a circular saw primarily for cross-cutting hardwood lumber to rough lengths prior to laminating it into blocks. This operation is all about speed. With thousands of feet of lumber in 16-foot lengths delivered at once, we really need to move through the...
When the new Worx WT480 10-inch compound miter saw arrived at my shop, I admit I wondered what I would do with it. After all, for years the center of my cutting operations has been a tricked-out 12-inch sliding compound miter saw. But after using the WT480 for a few weeks remodeling, I quickly...
One of the biggest challenges of my plumbing and heating practice has nothing to do with pipe, water, or fittings. Instead, one of the most problematic–and recurring–issues is making the cuts required to install those things in all the materials we encounter in both new construction and service...
I remember the first time I used a portable band saw as a young plumber's apprentice. We were working on a large commercial project and needed to hang our piping mains above a drop ceiling. When my boss told me to make 50 hangers out of steel stock and threaded rod, I thought I'd be stuck there...
Hybrid saws are a relatively new class of table saw introduced by DeWalt with its DW746 in 1999. Because of the vagueness of the term 'hybrid,' they are also referred to as light-duty cabinet saws. Basically in between a contractor's open stand saw and a shop-grade cabinet saw with all but the...