Finally! We're done restoring and calibrating our vintage radial arm saw. A friend found it on the street complete with a rolling cabinet headed for the land fill. I haven't seen, nor heard of a radial arm saw before I pulled up to it on that warm summer night. It's heavy – it's serious and frankly superior to many of it's wood chewing relatives. Behold the Dewalt 7770 Powershop Radial Arm Saw with Lectrostop!
It had a badly ruined shaft with other broken pieces found after disassembly which made a horribly unpleasant grinding noise when powered up so no wonder it was garbage. Determined to have this beast work for us, we brought it to a company that rebuilds any motor and gargantuan electric generators, but they didn't have time for an out dated 2.5HP motor. I haven't heard back from them sooo I guess the $100 'diagnostic fee' is off. A similar but weaker motor on ebay from another model was found. Luckily, we wired it up nicely to give us a fully functional saw with rolling cabinet for $60!
After mounting a 10" Diablo combination blade, it ripped a plank of red oak 'Like a hot knife through butter' just like the packaging promised. We re-made the table out of MDF and added supports to make sure our rip cuts stay straight and true.
It had all these attachments in the cabinet that led us to realize its full potential. After looking through the yellowed pages of a manual we were like: What can't this thing do? You can base a decent wood shop around this one machine! You can fold this thing like a gymnast and get any angle cut. Just look at this insanity!
When cutting wood is boring for you, there's other things that bolt up to the arbor to change it into a grinder, drill, sander, planer and more that's over our heads at the moment. Now that you know that radial arm saws kick total ass, keep your eyes peeled for one. There's no sense in having 4-5 separate machines when one can get the job done with less space, neighbor please.