In Brief.

We have opted to use the imperial method for referring to these circular saws as this is still the most commonly used term, so we will simply go with the flow! For the purists they are, of course, also known as 235mm hand held circular saws.

We separated out these ‘big fellas’ from the smaller hand held 71/4”circular saws also tested. The main reason is that, despite basically doing the same job, there really is little comparison between these and their smaller brothers in use, performance or operation. In fact, when choosing a hand held circular saw, the first question to ask yourself should be; how often will I need to cut deeper than say 60mm – the approximate maximum depth that a 7 1/4” should cut? There is no question in our minds that these larger circular saws are significantly more difficult and more dangerous to use than the smaller machines. However, if your intending to cut railway sleepers for instance, then there is no getting away from it; one of these bigger machines is what you need!

We place a lot of importance on power tool safety, and any machine that improves on this will usually be our favourite (assuming that everything else is more or less equal). The potential for injury when accidentally starting one of these machines just doesn’t bear thinking about! Well actually, we think that it does bear thinking about – by the buyer! The only machine tested with a safety trigger lock is the Hitachi, enough said! Makita ‘clawed back’ some of our safety first points as it is the only machine where the blade guard actually covers the whole saw blade! These machines are usually put down (rightly of wrongly) while still spinning, and it seems logical to us that covering up the entire blade just makes obvious sense.

The four machines tested here have some interesting differences. Makita, a long term favourite, still opt for a steel base plate. This is maybe a bit less accurate after a while compared with die cast alloy or magnesium base plates used in the other machines, but being plate steel it could prove more robust? DeWalt and GMC look quite different but their specs are almost identical even though the DeWalt, being substantially dearer, is listed as heavy duty. Hitachi has produced something just a little different from all of the others.

What we did.

As always, we start out by examining each product, referring to the specifications, and making notes about the obvious differences. We then comprehensively put each machine through its paces, cutting as accurately as we could and examining each result. We try to get a sense of ‘feel’ for each machine first, but we have found that first impressions can be a little misleading.

In testing these saws, we used a block of good old Australian hardwood, about 500mm wide - and 40mm thick - and cut freehand as accurately as we could to a line. We then set the bevel to 45o and repeated the operation. None of the machines had any trouble making the cuts of this nature.

Being able to see the line and the point of cut on the timber being worked makes a very big difference to the operator’s ability to cut accurately. Each saw tested felt quite different in actual use, & significant ‘kick back’ on start-up is common to them all – a little disconcerting!

We could easily see the true point of cut from both the left and right hand side of the machine with the Makita. The Hitachi and DeWalt were reasonably easy to track as well. We found this a little more difficult though when using the GMC machine, but this was compensated for, to a large extent, through the use of the in-built laser light.