bobbys

I live in Oregon and although most of the old timers have passed on to the great shingle mill in the sky many had no fingers!!!

I lived in New Jersey before Oregon. My father was a builder and bought a Worm drive in 1946 after the war, I still have it and it still works Perfect, He built hundreds of homes and this saw was used and i used it in the 60s and 70s. We also used a sidewinder but always had a commercial model with extra ball bearings. So i always saw Wormdrives but While Framing Sidewinders Mainly on other jobs, A lot of Rockwell and porter cable saws. Every Framer Used to have a Wormdrive mainly brought out while cutting headers, After i moved to Oregon i worked Union and it was all wormdrives, As it rains here nobody wanted to be the first person to touch it in the morn as they were All metal!!!! A helper could only do it once!!LOL,

At any rate i would never say one kind is better then the other rather both are used by me, Lets say i had to cut the ends of Rafter tails, One side is perfect for the worm drive the other side of the house is perfect for the sidewinder!!!..

Lets say i was roofcutting its handy to have both kinds .

Maybe because im older i cant cut plywood straight with the sidewinder any more i need the bigger base of the worm drive.