Review on 🔪 SKIL 75540: The Ultimate 4-3/8-Inch Carbide Flooring Blade by Rene Carrell

This saw was a great help when installing laminate floors. This is my fourth time doing laminate and I've used different tools or no tools at all to get the job done. If you have a miter saw and a table saw in your garage, that's great and you don't need these tools. It's the only tool I've found (other than a jigsaw, which takes a lot of patience) that can do your usual crosscuts and rip boards to length. It switches between cross cuts and long cuts fairly easily, but it's annoying to have to go back and forth. The fence on long cuts isn't secured with the screw you use for cross cuts, so it kind of moves. For some reason the blade felt like it was getting stuck about halfway through the long cuts, probably due to the way I was feeding it because I was sawing this off a 5x8 balcony on the floor. It comes with a pretty decent carbide tipped blade that actually cuts through those cross cuts very smoothly and quickly. I am using this on an 8mm laminate with a backing attached. Some of the other reviews I read said the laminate had cracks. I always cut with the laminated side down because you still leave marks on the underside of the boards. It also seems to reduce the amount of shavings on any saw. I read a lot of reviews complaining about the dust extraction. It produces a lot of dust, especially with long cuts, and it doesn't seem to collect it in a bag, but when I removed the bag to attach the vacuum to it when I had to bring it in, the dust bag fell off completely after only 100sf or were set roughly like this. I had to constantly sweep the snow off the saw while using it, so I think most of the dust has been removed. It connected perfectly with my standard Orrick vacuum on a day when the snow was too heavy and I had to make 3 more cuts to finish the room. It is assumed that you can also make bevel cuts at certain angles. The fence can be easily adapted for this. For my floors I couldn't make it as intended so I had to remove the fence entirely and hang it which is unsafe. I have a weird diagonal wall in my living room and one in my bedroom, so for most jobs that's not a problem. When I first took the saw out of the box it appeared ready to use, but the instructions said there were a few things you had to do to set it up. None of this was logical, it was annoying and unnecessary. Luckily there are some really good and detailed videos of this saw on YouTube. I sincerely appreciate whoever made them because I was desperate. This is a surprisingly easy saw to use, but the instructions are poorly written. Great product in every way, especially for a company with a bad reputation.