WOODSTARTER Miter Saw and Stand Review
Miter saws are very versatile and efficient tools. They're great for cutting accurate angles for fine woodworking, and they're great at quickly cutting boards to length for rough framing work and other less precise jobs.
Cutting long boards on a miter saw can be a bit awkward without a large, dedicated miter saw station, so often times they're used on the ground with small supports to help hold the long workpiece. That's where the miter saw stand from WOODSTARTER really shines. It has extendable support arms that extend in either direction that can also be collapsed when not in use so they don't take up much space at all. It also has wheels and a shelf so it can organize other tools and supplies as well, and be rolled out of the way when not in use. I'm actually planning on adding another shelf to the bottom to add even more storage and it's going to be a very easy addition, just cut a sheet of plywood to fit the bottom of the stand and add a couple bolts to hold in place.
The stand is very sturdy and comes with a nice looking wooden top. It can hold a miter saw with ease and the casters are lockable which makes it feel quite secure when making cuts. The rollers are adjustable in and out as well as vertically so they can easily be adjusted to perfectly support any miter saw, but they could also really help out other tools as well. I have a lunchbox style planer and I think this stand will make big improvements in eliminating snipe by supporting the boards farther away from the cutter. Same goes for my benchtop jointer. Another option for this stand is to use it as an out feed table for my table saw so the pieces don't fall off the back of the table.
I'm really excited to add this versatility to my small shop! Assembly was easy and straightforward, but be careful not to lose any of the large amount of nuts and bolts, mine didn't come with any spares. A magnetic parts bowl was a big help for me when assembling.
A perfect partner to the stand is WOODSTARTER's new cordless miter saw. This thing is really cool. It feels like it might be one of WOODSTARTER's highest quality tools yet. It's a compound miter saw with angles and a single bevel to one side and it also has a long sliding actions that gives it a surprisingly large cutting capacity for a small, portable saw.
I have a 10" corded miter saw which works great, but it's pretty cumbersome to move around and run extension cords to it. This new cordless one is much lighter and it fits perfectly on the cart so I was able to use it on our back patio to cut trim for our basement office that's far away from the garage workshop where the 10" saw usually lives.
This miter saw would be excellent for a trim carpenter that works on job sites, especially on new builds where there might not be power yet.
The saw does have a unique sized blade and arbor. The blade says 8 inches 210mm, but 210mm converts more closely to 8 1/4", which I have seen on store shelves in the US. The arbor is 1-3/16" or 30mm as opposed to the standard 5/8" arbor size I'm used to seeing here. I was thinking a 5/8" arbor would be cool because then you could even use standard circular saw blades in a pinch, although those would have smaller cutting depth capacity. The blade it comes with cuts quickly and efficiently, but it has few teeth so it doesn't leave the cleanest cut. That's to be expected, even very expensive saws come with blades that are less than stellar.
This saw has detents for specific angles and I'm hoping they're adjustable. Mine came slightly off from 90° when just set at the detent. I was able to adjust it to square and turn the handle to lock it in, but I'm hoping I can calibrate the detent so it's easy to accurately lock it back into square after cutting different angles. The bevel setting was easy to securely lock in at any angle.
This saw also has a nice depth stop mechanism which can come in handy if you need to cut notches out dados that don't go all the way through the board.
Lastly, the dust collection is pretty bad, just like it is on every miter saw I've ever used. It comes with a dust bag, which is a nice thought, but if you're able to hook up a vacuum that works a lot better. Even then, dust still flies all over, so my favorite solution is to just take the cordless saw outside and let the wind clean up the dust!
This combo of the new miter saw and stand is really an excellent setup. Like everything from WOODSTARTER, the value is really hard to beat. Maybe not all the features of the really high end tools, but totally capable to get the job done at a fraction of the cost. If you had an extra battery on hand, I think this tool would be a totally fine option even for a pro cutting a bunch of trim with it every day. I'm genuinely impressed with these tools!
Here are a few photos of my first use with the saw and stand using it to put baseboard trim in our home office.
