Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Somehow, I managed to get through life so far with a 1960's vintage Craftsman 9-inch radial arm saw, which I've used to build wall-mounted bookshelves, several workbenches, storage cabinets, picture frames, and a variety of speaker cabinets. These days, I do all my crosscuts on a power miter saw and I'm at an age where I no longer feel as confident trying to rip lots of raw lumber with the radial arm. Recently, I needed to rebuild a rotted back porch on a rental property, which required ripping lots of wet, treated lumber for spindles along the bottom half of the porch, plus numerous other pieces. After looking at every saw carried by out local big box orange store and big box blue stores, and watching dozens of YouTube video reviews, I settled on the DWE7491RS for my porch construction and hopefully some future cabinet-making projects. Other reviewers have covered pretty much all the pros & cons of this saw model, so I'll mainly offer some observations based on the sample I received. First and foremost, of course is the table. Yes, it is warped, but only slightly and not in a critical area. It is perfectly flat between the miter gauge slots, but has a slight slope from the fence-side slot to the right edge of the table. It droops by approx. 0.018" at the right-rear corner and about 0.012" at the right-front corner. Also, I sure wish they could coat the table with something smoother and more durable than that gray, painted finish. I tried waxing it before each use, which does help the wood glide easier, but after this one project, I can already see the gray finish wearing off in spots. Out of the box, most of the saw's adjustments were pretty close to optimal. Heel & runout were perfect as was the riving knife alignment. The blade, however, was 0.40° past vertical when set at zero, and was also slightly off at 45°. The fence was a few thousandths out of square and the rip scale was also slightly off, but both were easy to adjust. I really don't like the cam discs used for setting the 0° and 45° bevel stops on this saw. It requires too much trial & error to get it perfect, as the cam wants to rotate slightly when the Allen bolt is tightened down. I much prefer the machine screw & locknut system used for limit stops on most of my other power tools. Overall, this saw is quite a beast and it had no problem ripping some extremely wet, treated 2x6es. I did pop the breaker a couple of times (at load center, not saw), but once I moved the shop vac to a different branch circuit, I never had this problem again. Thanks to the electronic start, you can't use a single switch to control both the saw & vac, so this wasn't an issue. I was initially annoyed that the saw came with two different size dust ports and a user manual recommendation to use a Y-adapter, but such an adapter was not included (nor is one sold at any hardware retailer I could find, including the Dewalt website). Fortunately, with a shop vac connected to the 2-½" bottom port, there isn't a whole lot of sawdust coming out of the 1-½" blade guard port. Rather than rig up a 2-½" Y-adapter plus a hose-reducing adapter, I just transferred the fabric dust bag from my miter saw to the blade guard and this combination seems to work just fine. Another minor gripe, common to nearly all job site saws, is the inability to micro-adjust the bevel in the same manner as blade height. Not a big deal for the rough carpentry I'm doing right now, but eventually I'd like to do some finer work and it would be nice to have this feature. The Ridgid saw attempts to solve this problem by making the blade height crank dual purpose. It is spring-loaded and pressing it in engages a curved rack & pinion gear for adjusting the bevel angle. It's a clever idea but I found it to be a little clunky in practice. (I didn't try the micro-bevel adjuster on the SawStop—it was well above my budget limit.) I'm pretty happy with everything else. Setup and breakdown are very easy and I like how everything stores onboard (except for my new dado throat plate). The anti-kickback pawls can be a little tricky to attach and remove from the riving knife, but I've already discovered that they work well. Other reviewers have complained about the awful miter gauge that comes with this saw, but this didn't bother me too much. When I encounter a project where it is needed, I'll shop for a suitable Incra. I learned this lesson years ago with my other expensive hobby—astronomy. You can spend thousands on a high-end telescope and it will still come with a toy finder scope (the little telescope attached to the main optical tube). Why? Because there are countless after-market models available, each with their own special features. Same for miter gauges. There is no way a mid-priced table saw can include a gauge with all the features offered by the various Incra or Kreg models, so they don't even try. Besides, the included gauge can be made marginally functional by applying a couple of layers of plastic (exterior grade) painter's tape to the rail. This eliminates most of the slop but still allows it to slide smoothly in the slot. (There is a YouTube video showing how to do this, but it is pretty self-explanatory.) I'll update this review if something especially terrible (or wonderful) becomes apparent with this saw after continued use.