[Tristan Lall]

My main preference in a mitre saw would be something that has versatility (e.g. rounds, flats and extruded sections) and a secure workpiece clamping system. I did not appreciate having to be careful to align the crown in the material with the imperfections on the table, so that the workpiece wouldn't shift during or after the cut. In fact, given a sufficiently good clamp, it would be easy to make the rule that nothing may be cut with the saw if it can't be clamped properly (i.e. you're not relying on hands to assist in securing the workpiece).

I've used both a Craftsman portable mitre saw and a benchtop Delta. Although they were both decent units, I wasn't really fully happy with them. The Craftsman was not designed with metal in mind: in particular the fence was horrible. This led to techniques that, in hindsight, were not particularly safe (even with extreme caution regarding the location of fingers, workpieces and clamps). The Delta had a passable fence, but the rotating carriage wasn't level with the rest of the table. This meant alignment was a chore—leave a gap and the workpiece settles during a cut. That was very annoying for precision work, and meant that angles were never quite right. You could cut length to within a few thousandths of an inch, but the perpendicularity was always wrong.

I have managed to fling parts with both saws; I'm not very proud of that fact. After having experienced this the first couple times, I started to pay a lot of attention to the blades—I found that the Freud metal-cutting blades (carbide tipped, with numerous small teeth with alternating left/centre/right profiles and narrow kerf) worked much better than a generic carbide blade intended for wood. This resulted in fewer screwups, but given the other faults of those saws, it was hard to achieve as rigid a setup as I would have liked. Consequently, cutoff pieces still managed to work their way loose and go flying, occasionally taking teeth off of the blade. (This gets expensive: those are $40 blades.)

Incidentally, those blades are not for steel, judging by what it says on the side of the blade: non-ferrous metal and plastics only. We used abrasive cutoff discs in the Delta saw for steel, and they worked fine. As an added bonus (in terms of peace of mind), abrasive wheels are a little more forgiving than 80 pieces of silicon carbide (which are just waiting for an opportunity to remove a finger).

Another surprising problem is blade deflection. If you've got a long piece of stock, and someone is holding the end, it's very easy to accidentally apply a side load to the blade as it's making the cut. Not only does this cause perpendicularity errors, it risks damaging the blade, and puts an unexpectedly large hole in the removable plug in the table.

Given all of that, I very much like the idea of a saw that doesn't require much human interaction, other than to push down. And find the right blade—the benefits outweigh any reasonable cost.