Dewalt Power Shop Radial Arm Saw

[peppers1532]

I'm new to the forum, thanks for letting me join.  I came across this Dewalt Power Shop radial arm saw a few days ago and was wondering if anybody is familiar with this/could give me any information about it.  I have looked this up online and have seen plenty of Dewalt radial arm saws but nothing quite like this.  It has a spindle on the side opposite the saw which looks like it can be used with different attachments, this came with a drill chuck installed which I think is meant to accept a sanding drum but I'm not sure if there is another use for the chuck and if it's meant to be used vertically or horizontally.  There is also a saber saw attachment which I believe fits onto the same spindle, but I don't know if there are other tool options or if these are the only ones.

I think this is from the 70s and I am probably going to sell it so also wondering if anybody has any indication of the value of something like this.

Thanks!

[iclark]

I do not recall my father ever using the chuck attachment, but he had one for his Craftsman RAS. When they did the demos in Sears, the demonstrator would rotate the power head so that the spindle was vertical and put a router bit in the chuck. I remember seeing it used as an overarm pin router for engraving signs and routing the boundaries/edges of the sign.

[fredhargis]

Dewalt made the (IMHO) the best radial arm saws around, and they were the inventor of that style. Over the years the company was sold a few times, ultimately winfding up with B&D. B&D wanted to compete with Craftsman, which was selling their own version of the RAS. The problem was Sears made all kinds of attachments and marketed the saw more-or-less as a one tool does does it all. Most of the attachments they offered were miserable in their performance. B&D wanted to make the Dewalt competitive, so they started offering some similar stuff. Even simple things like a sanding drum weren't that useful. The motor spins to fast and the sanding drum will burn badly. For router bits (I think there was an actual collet attachment for them) the motor was to slow. Using it to drill was just a PITA. I have one of the sabre saw attachments, and while I've never used it on my Dewalt I can't imagine a time it would be worth the effort to set it up. Sears made a whole line of stuff that was even more useless. In any case, the Dewalt saws are generally thought of in 2 categories. There are the "good ones' and the "not so good ones". Unfortunately yours is one of the latter. The good ones, mostly made by Dewalt, then AMF, then the very early B&D models have solid cast iron arms with a positive angle setting system. One thing that happened with the later models was the increase of blade size, but not an increase in motor power on the smaller models. So you had a 3/4 HP motor spinning a 10" blade. In the days of HSS blades and kerfs that were thinner than today's carbide tipped ones it was adequate.....put a carbide tipped blade on them and they struggle a little to make tough cuts. Your saw has a "ladder box" arm, though it does still have the robust angle setting arrangement (milled slots in the column). Anyway, to rap up what may be more than you asked, the value of the saw could be anything. The RAS is not so popular with woodworkers any more for a variety of reasons. That saw could be worth $30 as a parts saw, or maybe as high as $75 to someone who wants one (a rare group). You might get more parting it out your self. The blade guard with the anti kickback paws could be worth $35-$40 by themselves, and depending on which motor you have it might bring $50 or more. The attachments are very popular on ebay and you could get a surprisingly high bid on them (separately). Depending on how much time you want to spend on this, you could visit Vintagemachinery.com and look up "Dewalt", there's probably copies of the manual in pdf form, and loads of pictures. One last thing, the saw is likely a late 70s/early 80s model, somewhere on it it should have a 4 digit model number which would help identify it. the term "Powershop" was used on many of the ones they offered over the years.

[EdL]

That saw is a late 60's early 70's vintage. Should be decent, looks like it had light use.

IMHO, the accesories are c onversation pieces.

Ed

[peppers1532]

Thanks guys, that was way more info than I was expecting!  I couldn't really picture how the drill side of the saw works and the info about the earlier vs later DeWalt saws is useful.  After posting I found a few of these on various forums which mostly didn't have the option for other tools and their value seems to vary between about $50-$250, but judging by your responses that is probably the difference between the ones with cast arms and the arms like my saw.  

I don't think this particular saw has seen a lot of use and it runs very smoothly but I'm not going to be using it myself so it sounds like the best thing to do is to take it to auction or part it out.  I think I will try to figure out some of the attachments too, I haven't really figured out how to rotate the spindle vertically because the saw blade seems to interfere with the arms but will have a closer look tomorrow.