3 ms·

Well, I had been thinking about an original round-top DeWalt RAS for when I have shop space of my own, but now I have something else to trawl craigslist for. Wh

Well, I had been thinking about an original round-top DeWalt RAS for when I have shop space of my own, but now I have something else to trawl craigslist for. What a nice machine; thank you for sharing the history.

RNCTX 6y ago
When I saw it on Craigslist I immediately drove out of state to get it. I can tell you that most of these rare birds gravitate to the owmm.org (old woodworking machinery) forum. They even have a surrogate system in place where they help each other buy machines local to another user and then settle up at scheduled meetups. A guy on there bought mine when I eventually sold it. I replaced a Delta RAS with it, that I never got aligned properly. The problem with long arm RASs is they tend to have inaccuracy along the arm itself. The bigger it is the less likely that is, but throwing mass at it is a poor solution. Having a shorter movement footprint is without question the better design. All of the bearings that guide the movement of a unipoint are within inches of each other and fixed in space. The bearings on a long arm RAS have all of that movement distance to get out of alignment. Good luck! There are a few floating around out there.
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  That is super informative. Thank you. I mostly lurk on owwm, but I've found it to be a very knowledgable and supportive community when I've had questions.
RNCTX 6y ago
my sale ad if you wanna try to talk the guy who has it out of it... http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=177973 http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=177973
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  "I have a 10" Forrest chopmaster but unfortunately I made the mistake of starting a cut on a steel plate without checking which blade was in the saw" :-D Did something similar with a hollow chisel mortiser. The head was hitting the fence, so I didn't set the depth stop. Which was fine, until I moved the table to cut another mortise in a location where the head didn't hit the fence. Turns out you can't cut square holes in cast iron with a hollow chisel and auger bit :-/
  - RNCTX 6y ago
    At least not unless you can pull really hard!

RNCTX 6y ago

When I saw it on Craigslist I immediately drove out of state to get it. I can tell you that most of these rare birds gravitate to the owmm.org (old woodworking machinery) forum. They even have a surrogate system in place where they help each other buy machines local to another user and then settle up at scheduled meetups. A guy on there bought mine when I eventually sold it. I replaced a Delta RAS with it, that I never got aligned properly. The problem with long arm RASs is they tend to have inaccuracy along the arm itself. The bigger it is the less likely that is, but throwing mass at it is a poor solution. Having a shorter movement footprint is without question the better design. All of the bearings that guide the movement of a unipoint are within inches of each other and fixed in space. The bearings on a long arm RAS have all of that movement distance to get out of alignment. Good luck! There are a few floating around out there.

mauvehaus 6y ago
That is super informative. Thank you. I mostly lurk on owwm, but I've found it to be a very knowledgable and supportive community when I've had questions.

RNCTX 6y ago

my sale ad if you wanna try to talk the guy who has it out of it... http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=177973 http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=177973

mauvehaus 6y ago
"I have a 10" Forrest chopmaster but unfortunately I made the mistake of starting a cut on a steel plate without checking which blade was in the saw" :-D Did something similar with a hollow chisel mortiser. The head was hitting the fence, so I didn't set the depth stop. Which was fine, until I moved the table to cut another mortise in a location where the head didn't hit the fence. Turns out you can't cut square holes in cast iron with a hollow chisel and auger bit :-/
- RNCTX 6y ago
  At least not unless you can pull really hard!