Radial arm saws - are they history like horse & buggy

[Donald]

I would love to have a radial arm saw. They were the basis of sliding miter saws only better. Takes up a lot of room and are heavy though. I went to a Ridgid 71/4 cordless sliding miter saw. It does feel safer than the 12 in spinning blade although the danger is always there. Lumber yards use heavy duty radial arm saws all the time. Even HD uses them.

Well talking about safety of large spinning saw blades, during several college summers I worked at a roof truss place. In the saw building they had a machine where 2 people would load pieces of wood horizontally onto a chain drive and the chain drive would pull the wood past four large saw blades to make two angled cuts on each end and then 2 more people would stack the wood as it came off the chain drive. When the front office would call and say OSHA was there for an inspection they would hang a "Device Down" sign on the saw and the people operating it would walk away so machine looked like it was being repaired.

And lunches we're usually "a liquid lunch".