Glass as well - make sure you use water to keep it cool and they last a lot longer.
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Ask and he may give you the used ones, which may still have some life in them.
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I can confirm that. My dentist only used the bits, whatever type they were, once, so plenty of life in them.
In fact he supplied me with any samples of new moulding type products that came his way.
Kept me going for years !
John
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Never thought of that. Thanks for the suggestion.
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I got cheap this Christmas. Got myself a book on wooden locks and this:
Oddly Lee Valley didn’t carry it in Canada, MEC did. Happily though because that probably saved me the Lee Valley 20% inflation.
Edit: the book: http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=73801&cat=1,46096,46120&ap=1
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I returned the extra miter saw and got a drill, a circular saw (battery powered… might have been a mistake), and a router bit set (The bit I needed - a rabbeting bit - was $30 by itself, the set was $50).
I decided to build a table to mount the miter saw to as my first attempt at wood working.
You may recall the sheet of metal I have that was to be my Glowforge table? We got a different one for that so I think I am going to use the metal sheet to build a game table instead. It will be set into and flush with a frame (rabbeting bit!). So for the router table I decided to try the same method for practice.
I learned a lot. Indeed to figure out a better way to put a frame like this together. Screws in from the side caused issues with splitting and… ugliness. This frame is 2x4s but my game table will be 2x12 with the 12 being the width of the frame, so screwing into the side will be infeasible. I need to figure out a better way to attach the legs. These are pretty flimsy. Of course the game table will be 4x4 instead of 2x4 so they will be a bit sturdier.
I’m not done with this table yet… it was just getting dark and cold. I want to firm up the legs by bracing them and adding a shelf at the bottom to be the home for all my power tools. I need to finish the edges, fill gaps, and then stain/seal it.
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a better woodworker than I can give you table building/bracing advice, but I can say with confidence that I love my battery-powered circular saw. I bought mine for cutting kindling: lighter, quieter, & safer than the chainsaw for the little branches and small offcuts of dimensional lumber.
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yeah the battery powered ones these days are excellent for general purpose woodwankery.
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The bat. powered circular saws are very handy, I have found though, that they work much better with a good quality blade. After wasting lots of money, I’ve discovered the Freud blades work the best with my own Ryobi. They stay sharp a long time, and about double the usable cut time per battery.
The table looks good, half the fun is figuring things out, then doing it better the next time. DAMHIKT.
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In this case maybe it’s the battery then. I couldn’t rip through all 4’ of my cut in one go, the blade kept jamming up.
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my 18v makita circular requires the 3ah battery, it won’t run on the 1.5ah… and yeah, it runs out of power going through thick stock. I don’t generally use it on anything thicker than a 2x4.
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Woodworker here, so I mean this as constructive criticism and advice rather then belittling and jeering.
The newer battery powered circular saws are really nice. Not a fan of Ryobi but for at home personal use, they are a great bargin. The price is scary sometimes with sales, and they do work fine.
Why I bring that up is that yes they are underpowered compared to a plugged in one, but for soft woods and ply they are fine. The jamming maybe from one of two things. Either as you are cutting you might be twisting or turning the saw a bit. That can create binding and jam the saw. Another is that the wood may be pinching the blade. This might be from bad support of your work piece, especially the off cut. Either your supports might be to far apart and your pressuring the piece closed on your saw blade. Or your off cut is unsupported and is flapping around a bit.
With plugged in saws you can sometimes over come these things with just the brute force. The battery ones are just a tad weak. But as said by @lcuellar63 a good blade helps, with some technique and support , and you’ll find that saw is great.
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I have a Craftsman Worm Drive (Skil) that I had 25 years. There is nothing like a quality corded power tool.
Let alone finding battery replacements after 5 years.
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My father in-law either dunked or left one of his Ryobi Lithium batteries out in the rain this summer. We were thinking of getting him one or two for Christmas but, jebus, Lithium is not cheap to replace. I even went looking for individual cells to do the work myself, and it was about the same price as a new battery.
Luckily Ryobi out of all the big names seems to have kept the shape and size the same across their line. When my makita 14.4v nicd died, they were onto the Lithium stuff. I had to replace everything.
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All of the things that @jordanloshinsky stated most definitely apply. When working with longer cuts a good clamp on saw guide is a great help to keep from binding your saw.
Also, keep an eye out @ HomeDepot, Ryobi batteries usually go on sale near the major holidays. You can get 2 of the big 4amp batteries for the price of one, to me they were worth the investment. You could also get one of the corded Ryobi circular saws for less than a battery will cost. The laser pointers are worthless unless you can hold your saw straight (if only they could burn the line in before you started to saw 
) I like that all the One+ tools are compatible, my cordless saw is actually one of the old first gen ni-cad models, but can use the li-ion batteries. I bought one of those inflater/compressors and the big battery will fill 2 light truck tires from dead flat. So, having the batteries is definitely handy.
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Thanks for the feedback. It was unsupported on one side. I figured that is what it was the first time so I put another table under it… but it still may have been off a bit. I got a bunch of clamps a few years ago on a Black Friday sale at HD… I’ve really been putting them through their paces lately! (And I don’t know what I did before I had clamps!)
My FIL got me the Ryobi miter and router, so i figured I may as well stay in the brand… though I do think it’s odd they chose a color that a child might mistake for a toy… anyway, aside from the binding blade on the circular, everything else is working great! I am especially glad I got a new drill. I thought my old B&D might be wearing out, but I didn’t realize how bad until I used the new one! Massive difference.
Thanks for all the feedback! I appreciate any constructive criticism!
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I still have and use every corded tool I bought in the 1980s and 1990s but I have had to replace cordless tools a couple times. I’m currently shopping for a replacement battery or two for my current drill/impact driver set before I need it and before they are no longer available to try to extend their life a bit.
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This is the major downside.
That said most of the rechargeable batteries are just wired series of AA cells and similar, so you might be able to do make your own batteries if you’re careful to leave the charging circuitry intact.
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This weekend I came across some failed 18V units.
Tore into them and am now learning all about MOLI FSPE IMR-18650 batteries.
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Batteries do lose capacity. Ryobi, however, has made a wide range of tools with the same battery design and appears to have sold a lot of them. So as far as risk goes, it would be the line to choose since somebody, if not Ryobi, should be selling replacements for quite a while.
As regards lithium based batteries and DIY, use the wrong charger chip and there will probably be fire.
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