Went down to my local store this morning. I looked at the Japanese saw, it felt very nice in the hand, comfortable and sturdy handle and from what I could see of the teeth it was fine cross cut and a coarse rip/universal style on the other side. I really do not have a use for this kind of handsaw though as I have several handsaws including japanese style already.
What I went for was the jigsaw. I have an old B&D that is really on it's last legs now and it uses an older style of straight shank blade that is harder to find. It's also only 400W and struggles on thicker material. Over the last couple of years I have collected a few t-shank style blades from promotions, giveaways etc so I thought it was time to buy a jigsaw to use them in.
First impressions, much bigger than it looks in the pictures, pretty heavy too. Comes in a nice case (bugger to get it all back in neat though). Packed with features that I would only expect to see on a much more expensive saw and certainly a lot more than my basic old B&D. Speed control is nice, goes VERY slow if you need to, I suspect it will be excellent for cutting sheet metal and plastics, on full speeds it really goes for it. It is noisy at the high speeds buts sounds smooth, the action looks good and the blade change works well too once you get the hang of it. I personally would prefer a momentary switch with lock as my old B&D had but this is not a big deal.
All in a all superb value for money and what seems to be a well built machine, pretty much as I expected based on my other parkside tools. Look forward to testing it out in anger.
Now what to do with the old B&D? I still have a couple of packs of blades left, maybe I'll see if I can donate it to a friend or just hang on to it as a back up?
What I went for was the jigsaw. I have an old B&D that is really on it's last legs now and it uses an older style of straight shank blade that is harder to find. It's also only 400W and struggles on thicker material. Over the last couple of years I have collected a few t-shank style blades from promotions, giveaways etc so I thought it was time to buy a jigsaw to use them in.
First impressions, much bigger than it looks in the pictures, pretty heavy too. Comes in a nice case (bugger to get it all back in neat though). Packed with features that I would only expect to see on a much more expensive saw and certainly a lot more than my basic old B&D. Speed control is nice, goes VERY slow if you need to, I suspect it will be excellent for cutting sheet metal and plastics, on full speeds it really goes for it. It is noisy at the high speeds buts sounds smooth, the action looks good and the blade change works well too once you get the hang of it. I personally would prefer a momentary switch with lock as my old B&D had but this is not a big deal.
All in a all superb value for money and what seems to be a well built machine, pretty much as I expected based on my other parkside tools. Look forward to testing it out in anger.
Now what to do with the old B&D? I still have a couple of packs of blades left, maybe I'll see if I can donate it to a friend or just hang on to it as a back up?
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