Friday, September 17, 2021
Features to Look for When Shopping for a Circular Saw
Pro Tool Reviews: If you’ve been on the jobsite for a while, you know what features to look for on a circular saw. At the very least you know the circular saw features you already use. However, as even cordless circular saws gain in performance, more features (and capabilities) keep showing up.
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LEDs on most cutting tools is a must these days. Call me spoiled, but when I bought a jigsaw that had an LED built into it for the first time it made me notice how much I wished for more light whenever I had to use one without. Honestly any feature that cuts down on the down time between cuts is a nice feature, which is why I find ergonomics and any quality of life features really fascinating.
A majority of the circular saw features that are highlighted in this article were selected for safety reasons. Whether it was the positioning of the safety trigger or the amount of visibility obstruction of a guard, it was clear that the safer the feature made the saw, the more desirable and important it was. The components that were more for functionality rather than something that increased the safety of the saw were only listed as “bonus” features, though all of them still had some relation to the safety of the saw. Obviously, all saws are designed with their features geared towards safety, but the article made it very clear that the focus on the details of these features are what makes them preferable to others. This is applicable to many other tools besides saws; most may be made up of the same parts but small adjustments and details determine favorability.
Although I do not have any experience with saws, I found this article informative as I will soon learn how to use one. It was very interesting to learn about all the different parts that make up a good saw and what features are worth it in the long run of what you are using the saw for. I really appreciated the safety notes mentioned as well because as someone who is new to sawing, it is important I am aware of all the safety measures my equipment has or is lacking so I can have a safe experience. Particularly, as an amateur saw operator, I found it easy to follow this article and enjoyed how all of the terminology was explained so that in the field, I know what to look for and I look forward to reading this article again after having some first-hand experience with a saw.
I hadn’t even known that many of the features listed in the article varied between different brands and types of saws. I will say that reading that several safety features were not uniform across most if not all circular saws certainly worries me a bit. Especially when thinking of the possibility that someone who was trained on one saw may not know or be able to access the safety features specifically the trigger safety and the lower guard of a saw. I understand the variance when it comes to efficiency or even quality of work depending on the saw but I was kind of surprised that there isn’t some kind of regulation requiring all safety features to be uniform on circular saws. The LED lights are a feature that hadn’t even crossed my mind as an idea until now. All though I know that all work environments in which circular saws are used are required to be well lit, I think that the addition of LED lights to the tool would help with increased safety and accuracy when cutting.
I had a lot of fun with this article, recognizing problems with saws I’ve used and the sheer depth of features I knew nothing about. There are those moments when I go, “yes, I know how to use saws” when I can do basic cuts but I still couldn’t understand some of the features that were talked about in the article. There is so much for me that is just a very basic level of self teaching but so much more experimentation that I have not tried and so much technical learning that I am missing. Also there was the recognition that other people use circular saws for a lot more than I have before. I would always use a chop saw for any cut not at a 90 degree angle. Those moments where problems with saws that I am used to, for instance ours always had lower guards that often had to be manually lifted were not normal and a bit hazardous as well.
I wanted to read this article because I am currently in the scene shop portion of stagecraft. I wanted to be able to connect what I am learning in that class to what this article says. Throughout this article, it keeps coming back to safety. Similarly in stagecraft, we also always come back to safety. You could have the best most incredible machine on the market but none of that matters if you are not going to operate the saw safely. This ties into another key point in this article that we also discussed in stagecraft, tools are NOT one size fits all. Something that is comfortable and safe for one person could be totally different than what someone else needs out of a tool. These ideas are something that I can take with me not only as I work through the scene shop but all of technical theatre. So many things that we do have a right versus a wrong way to do something but how you remain comfortable in that situation is up to you. Communicating what you need, especially as we start to learn more about ourselves as technicians will be highly beneficial for our success at CMU.
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