Picked up a Sears radial arm saw model # 113.199250. Saw works well with a new table. Now I want to expand its use. There’s a spindle on the carriage opposite the blade mount which is supposed to allow you to use it as a router, disk sander and other things. I looked on google and at sears and couldn’t find any accessories for this saw. Before I go out and try to cobble together some parts, I thought I’d ask you guys. I think it’d make a decent horizontal router if I can set up the collet. Disk sander will probably be helpful.
Any suggestions on where to get parts, how to set-up or other uses would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Replies
the make a moulder for that saw too. It will take your arm off, very dangerous.
About the most use the out board spindle is good for, other than a sanding disc/drum is a drill chuck.
If you build an aux. table and rotate the head so that a drill bit can be set up with the point facing you and protruding through a back fence, you now have a horizontal drill that is helpful for dowelling or roughing out mortises.
The RPM is too slow for routing.
By making aux tables of diffing configs, angled drilling can be done quite well, but again, the RPMs dictate the size of the holes you can drill.
It can be used for sanding, or mount a face plate/chuck to sand round objects; other than that, it's a good-sounding idea that turns out to be useless.
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
As noted the speed is a bit too slow for effective routing. Perhaps it might work for those super large diameter bits.
The auxillary tread on the shaft 1/2" fine thread which is suitable for a standard 1/2" Jacob's chuck [Charles to be proper].
For sanding, you can get a plain disc about 1/8" thick and 10" diameter designed for this. Sears might still sell them and they would have pressure sensitive sandpaper disks for them. A very useful accessory.
With appropriate ingenuity, it is possible to do wood turning on a Radial Arm Saw. I turned a base about 14" dia. and ~6" tall on one. Made out of plywood. All turned a 1" sphere on the end of a boom handle.
Your precision control is the crank that controls elevation or blade depth. But if you tilt the yoke so the axis is vertcal, then you can accurately cut dados in the edge of say 1/2" stock. Or make box joints. I combined this ability with a compound slide vise to make a combo miter/mortise/tenon joint in 5/9" material.
Unlike Norman Abram, I didn't have one of each tool in the shop. The RAS was the only machine so I pushed it.
~Peter
This space intentionally left blank.
In my younger days when I had little money, I did everything with my 12" Sears RAS, ripped, crosscut, dadoed, grooved, molded, planned, whatever it took. But, changing setups took time, which I had more of than money.
Now all my crosscuts are on the RAS, the rips on the table saw and the other tasks on other tools.
Ozlander
I'm with you, now I have a sliding compuond miter saw sitting next to the RAS. the RAS has been demoted to cutting kindling for the woodstove
a big dewalt arm saw was one of the first big tools i bought almost 30 years ago, I actually took it to job site, I was so proud, took three men to get it in and out. I know those things are supposed to do about everything but they really have reputaion for being kind of scary, I mean, it can be kind of dangerous in rip mode and crosscuting. They arent the kind of tool made for just anybody in a crew to walk up to and use safely. The only thing I have ever used it for where it really fit in was a cut off saw for long material in my cab shop, anyways i still have it. Its kind of like an old dodge, you can't sell it and you can't wear it out.
i have an old dewalt 7739 10" radial saw that i have had for about 20 years, when i first got it i wanted a bunch of attachments but i soon discovered that the radial saw goes out of ajdustment too easy when you change operations, and the run out is too great to do any accurate router work
now i only use my radial saw for crosscutting, once adjusted it stays spot on, i have a long extention table to the left of the saw with a stop, i use a forrest blade and can get splinter free cross cuts of about 26 inches by flipping the plywood against the stop
so unless you have a lot of time on your hands to keep adjusting the saw, or you do not have to have a great deal of accuracy in your work, i would pass on the attachments
by the way, you can make a nice jig to cut angles with the radial saw without having to move the arm to the angle you want to cut which gives you the ability to cut angles without risking the saw going out of adjustment when you return to 90
but if you want the attachments, get them, i did, they were fun to play with for awhile