Anybody had any issues with Makita Mitre Saws. Just picked up a brand new Makita LS0815FL. The quality is appalling, the sliding arms or more like grinding arms and the motor sounds dog rough. Made in China c**p
Old Makita tools were made in Japan according to the label, & they were quailty. Been looking for a new mitre myself to replace a ancient Makita one, also have noticed Makita quailty has gone downhill, castings rough,slide rails grinding, etc, so went for Bosch.
Bosch GCM8 SJL. With a 70 x 312mm at 90°it has the largest capicity for a 216mm (8") mitre saw, it's only a single bevel saw, some find that a disavantage, I don't. It's lot of saw for the money,search & you can find for under £300.
Yes it seems a good spec. Its got to be better than the Makita one I just returned. Thanks for the info
I've been looking at as many mitre saws as possible lately and a lot of them seem to have what I would consider to be rough slides. You would think that they would run like silk but this just doesn't seem to be the case. Going to visit Axminster Tools soon to have a play with a Kapex. Hopefully that will be better.
They use linear bearings with dust seals and highly polished rods. Never has a problem with my Makita. Plenty of far eastern rubbish around.
I had a look at the Makita ones in Axminister and the quality of the castings is very poor, one of the reasons why I'm keeping my old Elektra beckum.
I've tried out the new makitas in my local hire shop and the castings are anything but poor quality. Of all the scms saws on the market I'd still buy Makita.
Maybe a bit off-topic,but i have just bought a new Makita 10-8v cordless drill. Yes made in China,but I really can't fault it. I suppose that although these respected companies sub the manufacturing out to China,then if they oversee the quality control,the there shouldn't be a problem.
I wanted to get another Elektra Beckum kgs305, but now under the Metabo name it has changed for the worse. the Elektra one was real accurate, I used to prepare foot square blocks of 4" oak for turning with little effort, just a tad bulky and weighing in at 29kgs. I have also experienced the grinding of Makita rails on a company owned saw, which would also stick then unstick jumping forward and causing nasty biting problems. That put me off buying Makita Mitre saws, it doesn't appear to be one of their strong points. Also said Makita saw only had 3 feet left, so to use it safely I had to drill through the arm and attach a fashioned block, don't know if breakage was down to weak design or being a company site tool.
Spot on. Accuracy is perfect no adjustment needed and the cam lever on the side for bevel change is a dream to use. The Bosch blade mine came with though was sheeite. Other than that great machine.
Use Freud blades. Bosch have now brought out the GCM 8 SDE Professional, a dual bevel version. Still a 8" saw, same cutting capacity as the one I linked to earlier. http://www.cnspowertools.co.uk/bosch-mitre-saw-gcm8sde-240v-slide-mitre-saw.html
I've had look at a lot of chop saws, most Makita chop saws are made in the UK, apart from the small one. The slide action isn't smooth, and the angle measurement seems like a sticker? I felt that the Dewalt (Made in Italy) chop saw stands out the most, the slide action is nice and smooth, the angle is engraved on piece of metal, with positive stops.
Have a look at the Bosch GCM 8 SDE Professional, found it rather good,really like the SDS system for the blade change, just annoying they brought out a double bevel version only a few months after I bought the Bosch single bevel version.