[Music] g'day folks uncle knackers here and in today's video i'm going to give you guys my first impressions of the very popular corded dewalt dws 780 miter saw which is going to replace my old 10 inch dewalt miter saw which was unfortunately taken off life support last week due to a nasty accident and as you can see i also have the stand for the saw which is actually thrown in for free as part of the sales promotion and if time permits we'll have a quick look at that as well no promises so here we go [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] now my first impression is that this is a very sexy looking saw is that appropriate can i say that or is it a bit weird hmm now the obvious difference between my old 10 inch compound miter saw and this brand spanking new 12-inch double bevel sliding compound miter saw that's a bit of a tongue twister is the size and the weight of the machine this is larger and heavier coming in at 56 pounds which is about 25 and a half kilograms compared to my old 10 incher over here that weighs in at the jockey weight of 13.6 kilograms which is about 20 pounds but the advantage of the 12 incher is a greater vertical cut as well as horizontal cut and we have the ability to cut bevels on the right side as well as the left now look call me old-fashioned but when it comes to stationary tools like the miter saw i want a good dose of 240 volts running through that machine i don't want the hassle of batteries going flat and since this is going to be in my workshop 99.9 of the time it doesn't need to be portable which is when you might consider a machine that takes batteries now without a doubt when buying a brand new miter saw one of the biggest questions is how big do you want your cuts to be vertically as well as horizontally find that out and that will determine the size of the saw that you need now the vertical cut on this machine is pretty impressive and it's perfect for doing things like baseboards skirting boards or crown moldings the maximum height is 170 millimeters which is what this board is here so let's go ahead and give it a go [Music] like a hot knife through butter perfect now the cross cut capacity with the saw set at zero degrees and using a basic sheet good we can cut up to a width of 349 millimeters one very important tip when using the sliding arm feature on a sliding saw and that is always push through the cut and don't pull through the cut if you pull through the cut that can cause kickback which can either injure you or damage the piece that you're working on [Music] now we can get a little sneaky and increase that cross-cutting capacity by removing the fence on both sides and then all we need to do is to use that backstop as our fence instead of the original one there and we'll get ourselves an extra 38 millimeters or about an inch and a half and to do that just make another base plate out of a couple of sheets of plywood that sit on top of this one and finishes up being the same height as our original fence or a fraction higher and cut that to 500 millimeters wide by 630 millimeters long too easy now to make a miter cut as with all miter saws it's simply a matter of moving that base plate either to the left or to the right now in this machine here we have the capability of mitering 50 degrees to the left all the way up to 60 degrees on the right and we also have positive stops at the regulation zero degrees 22 and a half degrees and 45 degrees now this particular saw also has a positive stop at 15 degrees as well as one at 31.6 degrees which is this guy over here and also a mark only at 35.3 degrees which is this little fella over there now these two are often used for cutting the mitres on crown molding now to move that base plate to the left or the right it's really simple all you need to do is to release the miter lock handle just like that and then depress the miter latch button and away you go and once you get to your desired angle on the mitre scale just simply press down on that handle and that will lock the base plate in place now if we sneak around to the back of the saw this is a really cool feature it's the dual bevel system now dual bevel just simply refers to the fact that the saw is capable of beveling in both directions as opposed to many other miter saws which can bevel only in one direction and they are simply called a compound miter saw now to adjust the angle of that bevel it's a very simple task all you need to do is to loosen that large bevel lock knob and then just move the saw to your desired bevel re-tighten the knob and you're good to go now these two sneaky little black things are called beveled pawls and they act as positive stops for the bevel action so if we bring the first one across just like that and then lower the saw it'll stop at 22 and a half degrees push that back bring the bottom one forward and the saw will stop at 33.86 degrees push that one back and then the saw will come to a stop at 45 degrees now that's a pretty cool little feature now just say for instance you want to use that dual bevel feature with that yellow lever facing upwards we can only move the saw in one direction to enable beveling in both directions you need to slightly move the saw to the left then pull this lever out turn it counterclockwise 180 degrees and that will then enable us to bevel the saw in both directions now to get back to zero to a positive stop just click that around clockwise and the saw will click back into that zero position too easy now one last thing regarding the beveling system and that is we have this snappy little thing down here called the 45 degree bevel stop override now what that does is when you engage it and tilt the saw that lever is going to hit that adjustment bolt at a positive 45 degrees now watch this when we disengage it and then tilt the saw the saw bypasses that lever giving us the ability to bevel up to 49 degrees now that is pretty cool now another really cool feature with the dws-780 is this grooving stop which is a black lever that folds down and above it we have the depth adjustment screw as the name suggests this allows the depth of the cut of the blade to be limited which makes this very useful if you find yourself having to do any grooving or trenching work [Music] what an absolute idiot don't know him never seen him must be on day release from the lunatic asylum to operate it all you need to do is to rotate the grooving stop forward and then adjust the depth adjustment screw and set that to your desired depth of cut like that and then tighten this wing nut which is the lock nut and you're good to go [Music] now just be aware that sometimes that depth adjusting screw can be too tight to loosen by hand if that happens to you just use the blade changing wrench to loosen it [Music] beautiful to start the machine like most saws these days they all have a fantastic feature where the trigger has a safety switch now when that safety switch is on like it is now you can't push tha
