Mitre saw with good dust collection

[Peterm1000]

Does one exist? I don't really want to go beyond £500 but could if I really had to. Having had an Axminster white mitre saw for a while (dust collection - a joke), I'd like to upgrade to a saw I can use as a hobbyist for the next decade or more. What thoughts?

 

[harryc]

Nah not with a mitre saw even your £1000 kapex is not great.

 

[akirk]

my Bosch is very good, with a simple vac in the back very little mess anywhere... I have this combo:
https://www.axminstertools.com/bosch-gcm-8-sjl-216mm-slide-mitre-saw-stand-ax984901Bosch GCM 8 SJL

 

[sometimewoodworker]

Nah not with a mitre saw even your £1000 kapex is not great.

Do you have a Kapex with the correct short extraction hose to either a Festool vac or one of a similar performance?
If any one of those is a no then what’s your evidence?

There is at least 1 other saw that has as good dust collection but no woodworking tools have perfect dust collection and mitre saws by their very design produce more than almost any other tool.

Festool have managed to get better dust collection than most of the competition to the extent that I don’t need a dust mask using the sanders and TS55.

 

[Doug B]

The Kapex is way infront of any mitre saw I’ve used re dust extraction but it still gives some spillage.
Another option is to build an enclosure if the saw is workshop based, I’ve used one for years a throw back to the days when I had a radial arm saw, that thing was messy.

 

[harryc]

@sometimewoodworker
No I don’t but have used the Kapex and from other users experiences who have actually looked at this much mentioned dilemma of dust extraction with a mitre saw my conclusion is that even with the most expensive machines dust extraction, although better than a cheap jobbie is still compromised just due to the design of such machines.

There is a reason people go to such elaborate designs of dust shrouds.

 

[Ollie78]

Kapex is the best but no mitre saw is dust free.
There are various solutions like small tents or boxes the saw sits in to gather the dust better.
I see no reason a kapex style rubber hood could not be made for whatever mitre saw to help.

Ollie

 

[ComfortablyNumb]

Kapex 60 has just as good extraction as it's bigger brother and a lot cheaper. I use a 1.5m length of 36mm diameter hose on my kapex120 and it gets about 90% of the dust if you're doing square cuts

 

[Peterm1000]

Thanks everyone. It's a permanent workshop setup and would go where my current 10" saw is. On that basis, I'm not too worried about it fitting flush to the wall. I could build a hood to go over it, but don't I still have the issue with fine dust if I do that?

The Kapex 60 is an 8 inch blade, right? I think that might be a little small and I can't justify £1000+

I'm toying between Bosch and Makita and leaning towards Bosch

 

[RichardG]

my Bosch is very good, with a simple vac in the back very little mess anywhere... I have this combo:
https://www.axminstertools.com/bosch-gcm-8-sjl-216mm-slide-mitre-saw-stand-ax984901Bosch GCM 8 SJL

Mmm. That’s interesting, I have the same saw and I‘m not that impressed. I have it hooked up to a RP DX4000 and even with both motors running I still get clouds of dust when cutting anything over 100mm.

 

[Terrytpot]

In my limited experience scm's seem to come as standard with pretty dire extraction regardless of how much you spend on them owing to the difficulty of making an effective enclosure to extract from that would still enable the flexibility that we all want from them. As soon as you start improving one aspect another suffers as a consequence. There are many sources showing how to improve collection but most of them are model specific though so it's down to the individual to see if they can apply the specific mod to their own saw such as the following:

 

[sometimewoodworker]

Thanks everyone. It's a permanent workshop setup and would go where my current 10" saw is. On that basis, I'm not too worried about it fitting flush to the wall. I could build a hood to go over it, but don't I still have the issue with fine dust if I do that?

The Kapex 60 is an 8 inch blade, right? I think that might be a little small and I can't justify £1000+

I'm toying between Bosch and Makita and leaning towards Bosch

I decided that the Kapexes were not a tool that I wanted to afford like the MFT and the planers as I did not see the value for me. So I got a Mikita LS1212 and deal with the dust.

But for the Festool planer a contact in the importer offered me the HL 850 planer at a price that was so good because they were overstocked I agreed to buy it even though I have a cheap one that I seldom use. It is so much better than anything else that I haven’t tried selling it. so if I had a Kapex I’m sure it would be equally better than the Makita unfortunately being retired makes me even less likely to spend the maybe £2,500 that it would cost to get one here (I can’t tell exactly how much but other tools are about double to 50% over the U.K. prices)

So only you can decide if the extra price of the Kapex will be value for money, it’s better than either of your choices in all ways not just dust collection, but is it better enough?

 

[Ollie78]

The thing is with a kapex is if you don't abuse it you can easily sell it for a pretty decent price.
You won't sell it though because it is really nice.
I never buy festool stuff at normal price they do good offers sometimes so I wait till then.

Ollie

 

[Peterm1000]

The thing is with a kapex is if you don't abuse it you can easily sell it for a pretty decent price.
You won't sell it though because it is really nice.
I never buy festool stuff at normal price they do good offers sometimes so I wait till then.

Ollie

I plan to die without selling it so that will be kids' problem!