Yes, I saw this on an infomercial this morning, which automatically sends me careening toward the junk side of the genius-junk continuum. Still, I can’t help but wonder if this thing has a place in the shop. The ad shows it plowing through metal and wood in what appears to be a relatively controlled manner — but then shows it cutting tomatoes and eggs, which seems pretty damn jackass. Read on for the details.
The basics: It’s a 4.5″ (read: trim-sized) circ saw featuring counterrotating blades. The manufacturer claims that the dual-blade design reduces kickback force, spark output, and vibrations, making it easier to make precision cuts. Somehow I have trouble considering anything cutting with this wide a kerf “precision.” But not everything in the shop needs to be (or starts out to be) precision-cut. This reminds me of terminology you see in the specs of plasma cutters all the time: There’s “cutting,” which means leaving both sides of the cut with a relatively straight, finished edge, and there’s “severing,” which means hacking the damn thing into two pieces which you can clean up later if you wish. If this were a good tool for “severing” bits of steel or wood (or other stuff), it might not be a bad deal.
Pricing is a bit of an issue, though: $120 seems steep for something like this, especially with no brand backing to give us any idea of quality. (Hey — I’m as against buying tools “by color” as you should be. But with no other information on which to judge, what do we do?) Replacement parts might be an issue, too, if the company bites the dust or abandons the project. Now that I think about it, I’d really like to know how blade life stacks up as well.
What do you think? Have any of you actually used this thing? Or maybe more to the point: Would we be better served with one of the many multi-material circ saws out there?
The DualSaw [Corporate Site]