hey everybody and welcome back to
another episode of northwest craftsman
if you're new to the channel welcome and
if you're already a subscriber thank you
very much for joining us again
all right today we've got another one of
the tool unboxing videos and today is a
pretty special one i just got married a
couple weeks ago and one of the gifts
that my wife and i got it was mostly
intended for me but i make my white
furniture
is a sliding compound miter saw from
dewalt the exact model number is the
dws-779 and i got this from two of my
good friends in grad school so you guys
know who you are when you're watching
this thank you so much i really
appreciate it
when i saw this come through i was just
absolutely thrilled so i'm gonna do this
just like i do a lot of my other
unboxing videos where i'm not commenting
on it live but i do a voice over so that
i can walk you guys through all the
different components and everything that
i have as an unboxing this and i can
give you guys more details
about the saw as i'm unboxing it well
let's go ahead and get started
so the first thing to note is that
there's two primary models that dewalt
sells
one is the 779 which is what i got and
then there's the 780.
from all the research that i've done the
only difference that i can tell is that
the 780 has their new xps cutting system
on board
which shines a light down both sides of
the blade giving you a good alignment on
your workpiece so that you can see right
where you're cutting
you can kind of think of it like a laser
but it's just two lights on either side
of the blade
before i start removing components from
the box the other thing that i want to
note is that a sliding compound miter
saw is good for
precision angle cuts that are cross cuts
not rip cuts
though a table saw can do all of the
cuts that a miter saw can the miter saw
is already set up to do the bevels
and angles that you might need another
reason you might want to get a sliding
compound miter saw over a table saw
is the price these sliding compound
miter saws will run anywhere between
three and four hundred dollars as
opposed to the
one thousand to twenty five hundred
dollars that you can expect to pay for a
table saw
for the price i think it's absolutely
worth it and it delays me getting a
table saw just that much longer
so removing this off from the package
you'll notice that all of the components
were sitting on top of the cardboard and
then the rest of it is really just one
monolithic structure that sits inside of
two big
styrofoam blocks i have found that one
of the easiest ways to remove tools from
big boxes like this is just to cut down
one of the sides or to cut
all four corners so that the box just
falls apart and you can pull the tool
straight out
when you're lifting the saw dewalt has
carefully marked lift points
all over the top of it you can see it
with what looks like four fingers and
two
arrows pointing to the spot where you're
supposed to lift
at this point i don't have a table to
directly mount this to or one of the
pre-set up tables where i can mount it
to so i'm just setting it straight on my
workbench for now
in a future video i'll go through my
mounting plan for this tool and a couple
of my other tools along with a general
plan for my shop now that i've got more
tools
so for a little bit more detail of each
one of the components first up we have a
work piece clamp
two mounting brackets for the edge
extenders edge extender for the right
side
edge extender for the left side dust
collection bag
and mounting hardware in this next step
we're going to set up the edge extenders
if you're going to mount this straight
onto a table that is flush with two
different table top surfaces
skip this step because you need to make
sure that your left hand side and right
hand side
sit flush with whatever surface you're
trying to work on and these work well if
it's free standing but not if it's
mounted into a table
if you are going to mount the edge
extenders mount this bracket onto the
pre-threaded bolt that they already have
installed to the bottom of the base
i did this side a little bit backwards
but essentially what you're doing is
you're getting the edge extender put in
there and you're gonna wedge it up
against the base and this acts as the
compression force from the bottom to
hold it tight
the legs of the edge extender definitely
had a compression set as you went in
there so you had to crank it down to get
it to seat properly
earlier on when i was introducing the
parts you heard me say that there was a
left side and a right side to the edge
extender
that's true because that long piece that
you see there at the front sits further
out towards the base
the other thing to keep in mind is that
that fastener you see right here it goes
on the
inside of the base not on the outside of
the base so on this side i learned a
little trick to get things installed
more smoothly once you have it all set
up you're going to want to take your
edge extender in
and dry fit it into place then take the
bracket in the wing nut only
not with a lock washer and get it
tightened down so that it cinches it all
the way up to the top where it's
supposed to sit
once the legs of the edge extender have
settled into place go ahead and undo the
wing nut
put the lock washer in between it and
then tighten it all back in place
and that's really it for the assembly of
the parts the only other piece that came
with it was the work clamp
but again remember if you plan to mount
this into a table system you don't need
those edge extenders and so the saw
comes ready to go
out of the box next up i wanted to test
the miter system on this which was
pretty nifty they've got this little
tiny button that you press right here
once you press it it allows you to
swivel all the way around to all of the
different angles and when you let go of
it it'll snap into the different
positions
for bevels on the back side they have
this spinning clamp which will loosen up
and they've got this
zero lock position which you pull out to
move and then when you go back to zero
it'll snap into place
and then i kid you not i'm a little
embarrassed to say this it took me about
20 minutes to find this
unlock pin so that you could actually
raise the head of the saw
for dust collection they have the
attachment port for a dwv
9000 which is the universal dust
collection port adapter from dewalt
as with all power tests turn it off and
on as quickly as possible for the safest
operation
well there we go now let's cut some wood
with it
i tried cutting this wood in basically
every conceivable way possible to test
out the saw
i'll have to do a little bit more
research to see what the quote-unquote
correct way is to use a sliding compound
miter saw because i imagine there's
probably a best practice
once i find out i will absolutely let
you guys know
testing out the actual miter function
worked beautifully snapped into place at
a 45 degree angle cut nice and smoothly
all the way through
and when i put the pieces together that
looked pretty much like a 90 degree
angle
and when i put the machinist square on
it it was dead on 90 degrees so there
may be a little bit of adjustment later
but right now
looks awesome well guys thanks for
joining me today i really appreciate it
uh
quick overview about the process or
quick kind of just general overview
about the process
dewalt's instructions were not really
all that clear they tried to cram it
into such a small amount of or a low
number of pages that they didn't have a
lot of figures and so you'd always have
to flip back to the main figure in order
to see what they were referencing
which made it kind of painful because
every other word is a part number that
you're trying to look at or trying to
work through
so perhaps it's just me because i've
never had to use a compound miter saw
before
however i found it decently difficult to
follow the directions totally possible
but decently difficult
overall on the operation the build
quality is spectacular i'm really
excited to start using this thing
dewalt seems to have done another great
job on the mechanical portion
of their builds and i'm really excited
to start using it
that quick little cut that i did at the
end at a 45 was just a test to see it's
like how close to a 45 is this getting
and based on putting my machinist square
on the outside
it looks like it got pretty much spot on
it's going to be far more accurate than
i'm able to do with my hand so i'm
excited to start using this excited to
start seeing what i can do with it
and um one last thing all of the
adjustments that you need to make to
this there's like a whole page and a
half of adjustments
and the whole directions are like two
pages long so it's like two and a half
pages so
almost half of the directions about how
to adjust it or how to take different
pieces off
i'm going to do a whole entire episode
on that because that's too much to cover
in this one particular episode
but overall i hope that you guys learned
a lot if you have any questions about
what we did go ahead and leave it in the
comment section down below
and i will get back to you guys thank
you guys so much for joining i really
appreciate it if you like this kind of
content we'd appreciate you subscribing
uh it really helps the channel out and
we really like having you guys around
at any rate have a great one you guys
i'll talk to you next time bye
[Music]
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