Coggy
I thought the Skils were now being positioned below Bosch Industrials in the market place (Skil have been owned by Bosch since the 1980s), so I'm not sure about their quality. I've had Skil industrial stuff in the past (like the Skil saw) and I'm unsure about the reliability - their stuff doesn't seem to last as long as Makita, Metabo or Bosch blue and they discontinue parts support at the drop of a hat, or so it seems. I use a Bosch GKS86B plunge saw which has the advantage of running on the Bosch rail system (retracting riving knife). The only thing I have to say about the saw is that it is a bit sensitive to rough handling - drop it a few feet off a trestle and you may have to spend tewty minutes or so messing about with the riving knife assembly. Other people have told me that the HolzHer (now deceased) and Festool saws suffer from the same problem. But then we shouldn't be so rough with our kit.....
BTW, Maffell, deWalt and Festool also do rail systems with their saws although I believe that only Maffell and Festool do the plunge saws. The ability to resize flooring plywood in situ with a combination of saw and rail is not to be sneezed at (and when was the last time you bought a perfectly square 8 x 4 and laid it on a perfectly flat floor in a perfectly square building? :wink
, as is the ability to make a plunge cut mid panel (can't say I've used it a whole lot, though) - and the rail can be used with routers and other tools, too.
Scrit
