Bosch Glide Mitersaw users ?


wdwerker

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I'm considering replacing my Dewalt  12" SCMS with a wall hugging mitersaw. That extra depth eats into the aisle space in front of the machine. Anyone have any input as to the quality & accuracy of the Bosch ?  The Kapex doesn't seem worth the $$$ to me. This saw will live in the shop 99% of the time, 100% if I keep the Dewalt around for the rare jobsite use. It's been years since I've heard the Bosch be discussed .

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I really like mine Steve.  I have had it for about two years now and have no complaints.  I have the 12 inch model and it has plenty of power, in fact when you trigger the power it has a tendency to torque upward a little.  It has a lot more power then the Kapex, but this is second hand information, one of the guys that works at my local woodcraft store owns both.  It was pretty dialed in when I received it.  I had to adjust it once but that was my own doing after bumping it pretty had move stuff in the shop.  I haven't made a lot of angled cuts on it but it was used to make a large frame for a mirror and it came out nice.  If you have it dialed in on 90 degrees the detent for 22 1/2 and 45 seem to be right there. When I make 90's with it, you can put an engineer's square to it and see no light.  The articulating glide mechanism seems real stout and sturdy.  The only complaint I would have is the stock zero clearance plate is anything but zero,  it was 1/4 inch or more in width.  I just made a new one out of a scrap of oak.  Dust collection is okay.  I have a CT hooked up to it but there is still some residual dust.

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With you new DC for sure.  Estebubba (Mike) has a ten inch and he built a shroud around his.  He put dust ports up high because of the fact that the saw goes flat against the wall and if  I remeber he had them on both sides and with his Grizzly cyclone he was getting excellent results. 

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I love my 12" Glide Mitre.  I made a couple of improvements to it.  A zero clearance insert for the base, and a rubber boot from an old wheel barrow inner tube on the dust collection chute that is larger than the original (both featured on my You Tube channel).  I have another blade that I am going to put on it,  a Dimar 88(?) tooth blade that I have heard several reports of being better at the dust issue.  I don't have dust collection in my shop, so I am relying on the bag only.  The thing came in a box that was beat to death from UPS and was still dead on accurate and remains so a couple of years later.  The only other downside to the dust issue (without a collector) is the weight.  It is heavy.  Mine lives in the shop so that is not an issue for me.  I wouldn't want to lug it to, from, or around a job site much.

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I have the 10" glide and like it. I'd honestly say it has more play in the mechanism than the dewalt 10" that i had but with proper use it's not a concern. I used my glide to make 12 picture frames recently and almost all of the joints close up perfectly, far better than the dewalt that i had. The few that didn't close up nicely were because of the previously stated user error.

The blade that comes with it is pretty decent actually. I used it for a while just to give it a shot and was impressed. I have since traded the blade to my dad for my full kerf Freud Industrial blade back that he inadvertently borrowed from me. He's pretrty happy with the bosch one for the little bit he does.

I installed the Kapex boot on mine and it aided in the dust collection some, the biggest help was hooking up the CT vac to the port. I also installed a ZCI and an auxiliary fence. I feel the fence is as important as the ZCI on the bottom. I don't know why but i got more spenching on the backside than I did with the dewalt.

This is never mentioned, a LOT of people swap out the hold down for some other option and i find this absurd. The best way to use the bosh hold down is to use it like a hold fast. Give it a wack with a mallet on the top to set it and a wack on the side to release. Solves all of the "OMG this takes for ever to set" problems. it's also probably faster than using the festool one or what ever the kids these days think is cool.

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I got one a few months ago.  Upgraded from a non sliding 10" Craftsman.  I researched a lot before buying and the general concensus was that the dust collection was okay to pretty good.  Based on my experience, I'd hate to see the results from a saw with poor dust collection.  Granted, I only have a shop vac hooked up to it and haven't built a hood yet but dust collection on mine is almost nonexistent.  

I plan on building a hood and trying to figure out a way to hook up my DC in the future.  Hopefully that helps.

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Steve, I don't have the glide, but a Hitachi and you can mount it close to the wall because you can choose how you want it to slide.  12" and is a heavy SOB but has been extremely accurate and 1/2 the price of the Bosch. I'm actually getting away from using it, because of the foot print it takes up.

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58 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

The best way to use the bosh hold down is to use it like a hold fast. Give it a wack with a mallet on the top to set it and a wack on the side to release.

This is exactly what I do and it doesn't even really require a mallet, usually just a bump with my hand gets it to grip.

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Steve, I have had the 12" for about 5yrs, it has been a great saw.  For the first couple of years it got tossed around between two places, and now is permanently installed.  It took a little getting used to, the startup torque can surprise you, and the glide mechanism is "different".  From the factory there is very little resistance in the glide arm when cutting, hard to explain, but if you don't like it, it is adjustable.  I can't tell you about the factory blade, never used it, I put an 80 tooth my saw sharpener guy recommends before I ever turned it on.  I made a zci for it, added an extra boot to help the DC.  The one thing I didn't like about the saw was the lack of the a laser.  I almost didn't buy the saw because it lacked a laser, then I saw this on youtube:  

and that solved that problem.  I bought this light https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ACIFPYA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and didn't alter anything just hot glued it on and plugged it in, I am really happy with the results.  DC and zci.

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LED

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57 minutes ago, Chet said:

This is exactly what I do and it doesn't even really require a mallet, usually just a bump with my hand gets it to grip.

I usually use a piece of scrap laying around but yeah it doesn't take much.

I stopped using my hands as hammers when my dad started having some major nerve damage in his hands which he claims was from using his hand as a hammer at work for many many years.

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I went from a Dewalt 12" to the 12" glide a couple years back for the same reason you are looking to save space. It has worked well although I don't ask much of it pretty much is just a chop saw in my flow. One thing to note I use a lot of Freud blades but because they are not a true 12" blade it would not cut all the way through so I ended up with a Forrest blade on it. Not a problem but a bit more money.

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Steve, a buddy of mine who owns a tree service also Mills on site. I've put in hours on the mill with him paying for choice lumber. When we stack orders, he likes all the end to be freshly cut when stacked and sticker and as long as I've known him, he's been using a DeWalt slider. About 6 months ago, he switched over to the gkide 12" and boy was I impressed with it over the kapex. I used to have to wait for the kapex to spin up to full speed before taking the end cut in 1x 6 redwood, times 500 boards.. 

Like was mentioned above, there is power to waste, quick spin up, the action is very smooth but I haven't a clue about the collection effort. We are working on a foot of compacted sawdust. 

If a mitre saw is on my wood working tool list, I'd start looking there. 

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4 hours ago, pkinneb said:

One thing to note I use a lot of Freud blades but because they are not a true 12" blade it would not cut all the way through

This is interesting, I have a Freud 12 inch on mine and I haven't had this problem.

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7 minutes ago, wdwerker said:

There might be a stop that's adjustable to control the depth of cut.

Yes there is a adjustable depth stop.   You can cut dados with the saw if you were so inclined.  I have messed with it but haven't done anything project based with it.

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I have no insight into the bosch glide, but I made a dust hood for my dewalt scm and over the years have had no complaintspost-2926-0-97807800-1300843079_thumb.jpg

I use it daily when in the shop before it was a dusty mess in the scm area, now mess is contained to a garbage can. I have a potable stand for my dewalt when working in someones home I take the hood with me it contains the dust to the garbage can easy peasy.

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9 hours ago, Chestnut said:

I have the 10" glide and like it. I'd honestly say it has more play in the mechanism than the dewalt 10" that i had but with proper use it's not a concern. I used my glide to make 12 picture frames recently and almost all of the joints close up perfectly, far better than the dewalt that i had. The few that didn't close up nicely were because of the previously stated user error.

I have the 10".  It took me some time to get used to it.  Mostly I needed to stop thinking about it.  I was pretty convinced it had an alignment issue with the blade being off from the slide path but I think it was mostly user error.  My previous saw had the handle oriented vertically so it took some time to adjust.  I really don't use the miter saw for accurate cuts so it isn't something I have put a ton of thought into.  I did once try to use the 22.5 degree stop to make an octagon and it wasn't even close to closing up.

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When my Dewalt was new I decided to see how accurate I could push the results.  Used up a bunch of short scraps of Mahogany trim I had run for a project. 3" crown & base scraps mostly. 

 

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Top view. The shelf is probably African mahogany. All the trim in my house is  philippine mahogany (also called luan or meranti) . When the house was being built Ferdinand Marcos had a lot of shoes to pay for and it was selling for less than white pine  that year . 

Its amazing what you can do with a tuned & adjusted mitersaw. There was plenty of short scrap and very little survived. At least a 1/4 of the parts ended up rejects as I learned how to get accurate & consistent results from the machine. 

 

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Having gotten to use a Glide, Kapex, Dewalt, and Hitachi side by side every day for a while at the shop I was working in, the Glide was by far my favorite to use.  It lived up to it's name.    But as mentioned, it does take some time getting used to, as the action is so smooth and easy, it's easy to be a little rough on it at first.   Once it was tuned in, gave the best cuts in the shop. 

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Some pictures as you requested and i promised. I haven't cleaned up around the saw in probably 2 months and did a LOT of mitersaw work in those 2 months. There is dust there but it is FAR better than before i started using the CT mini on the saw. The one nice thing to note if you make a hood is the dust does generally stay behind the fence.

Kapex dust boot

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ZCI and 1/4" fence. I just did the old blue tape and super glue trick to attach it. Works great! It's 34" from wall to end of knob. You need to have a couple inches away from the wall to allow for swing for miters.

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Space behind fence another dust pipe picture and picture of how much dust it missed after 2 months of good use. The picture below also shows the hold down that chet and i were talking about. I like it ALOT. I actually use this one as mentioned before unlike the one on my dewalt.

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Olive ZCI because why not?

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10 hours ago, Chet said:

This is interesting, I have a Freud 12 inch on mine and I haven't had this problem.

Hmm. I called Freud and they were the ones that told me the blade was less then 12", I measured and they were right about 11 3/4 so I returned it and got the Forrest blade which has worked fine. I will look into the depth stop solution although at this point I will probably not need a new blade in my lifetime LOL.

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