Customer Reviews

Hitachi C10RA2 10-Inch Portable Table Saw with Metal Stand

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This saw is just light enough to be in the portable catagory, with two people it's easy as pie. The rip fence is very smooth and accurate and will rip to about 15" on the right hand side(Hitachi could do better here). A few concerns I have on this saw since I've put it through the works: The motor "spindal assembly" seems to have abit too much in/out freeplay for me. Secondly the miter guage is too short for much over a 2" board. This miter guage is great when it is fully in its slot, but very sloppy if miter cutting much over a 2" wide board. Last is the height of the throat plate-it needs to be shimmed since the work will drop a bit as it is fed through the saw. Affordable but not perfect yet.

I purchased this table saw two years ago. It arrived on time and in perfect condition. The manual is well written and is easy to follow. The assembly and set-up was easy and all the parts fit and lined up well.

What I Liked:
1) The motor is very strong and never bogs down, great motor.
2) It is the only saw in this price range that you can use a stacked dato blade on, (A wobbel type dado blade is to wide to fit)the instructions recomend a 6 inch dado, i used and 8 inch and it worked fine. But you can only safely stack the dado blades to 1/2 inch thick cut and still get all the threds on th arbor nut on the arbor.
3) The fence is smooth, accurate, and works well.
4) The Stand is very nice.
5) The dust collection port is very nice and works very well, the saw blade is surrounded by a heavy sheet metal dust collection boot attached to a nice 45 degree connector to attach to your dust collection system.
6) The blade that comes with it is ok (It lasted me three years and was only sharpened once. A Forrest blade is awsome, is used the Hitachi blade on all my rough carpentry.
7) The aluminum table is flat and works well.
8) It is fairly light weight, but it takes two people to move easitly.
9) It will fit through a standard door with no dissassembly. Can't do that with my new huge 400+ pound table saw!

Dislikes:
1) The sliding mitre guage fence is not accurate, lots of play in the mitre groves.
2)The arbor has a littel more play in it then i would like, you can wiggle the balde slightly, on a Delta, Jet or Grizzley there is no wiggle at all.
3) It is very dificult to get the blade to 90 degrees or 45 degrees accuratly using the saws adjustable stops. I used an accurate square and triangle every time I moved the blade to make sure it actually was square or at 45 degrees. A bgi annoyance!
4) The blade insert / throat plate sits slightly below the table level. Very annoying when cutting small peices of wood where it could tilt slightly down onto the blade insert. There are no leveling screws or easy way to fix this. I epoxied a peice of oak to it and sanded it until it was flush with the table.
5) It is pretty darn loud. Wear ear plugs!

Recomendations: I learned my lesson. The Hitachi is ok but... Always buy good expensive tools. Buy a Table saw that costs $850 or more. I sold my Hitachi to a friend who loves it, he is a rough carpenter though. I bought a really nice table saw for Christmass. It is so very much better then the Hitachi. I never have to adjust or mess with the new saw, it runs silently and is ready to go with no fuss. I had know idea that a good table table saw was so much better to use and so much less fuss until i bought one. Good tools work much, much, much, much better then cheap ones. They are so much easier, accurate, and user freindly. Thinking about a cheap table saw... don't do it. Always buy the expensive good one, you will be much happier.
Try the Grizzley, Delta, Jet, or that other one I cant remember the name of!

This saw has limited uses. It rips well, through 12/4 maple even. But that's about it. The miter gauge is terrible. It has way too much slop for accurate cuts. And the unconventional 5/8" T-track will not accept any other miter gauges -- or tenoning jigs or anything else for that matter. The only way I've been able to make accurate crosscuts with this saw was to build a plywood sled that spans the blade and rides in both the left and right tracks, and this was difficult because I had to mill stock to the cross-section of the T-track. My biggest beef, however, is with the blade height adjustment. There is no way to lock it down. And with the way that 15-amp motor rattles the light aluminum body, the blade moves up -- or down -- every time you start up the saw. This is fine for ripping and cutting, but unacceptable for dado work. If I need a precise cutting depth, I have to rig up a clamp to keep the blade-height-adjustment crank from moving as the saw vibrates. But hey, what can you expect for the price of this saw. This is a [cut-rate]saw. For carpentry, O.K. For fine woodworking, dig deeper into your wallet and get something better.

I love this saw but it has a few rough spots. The saw was out of adjustment out of the box in 2 aspects. 1. Squareness of blade to the table and 2. parallel-ness to the miter gauge. I tried to adjust it according to the manual but there was so much thread lock on the adjustment screws it broke my screwdriver and stripped the screw heads...

Good points: Powerful, nice compromise in size and weight for a portable, big table. Great Fence. Sturdy stand. Unbelieveable price. Hitachi needs to tighten up the quality at that Taiwan plant and they will have a winner.

Dollar for dollar, this is the best deal in table saws. There seems to be two types of table saws - toys and monsters. This one is small enough to move out of the way when not in use yet a large enough table top for the serious home project carpenter. For a few dollars more than a high quality circular saw its the best value table saw out there. Its well constructed, high quality, excellent motor, and sturdy. With the stand included is good to go out of the box.

I use the saw daily in my work. I have used it for almost a year now with no problems. The fence locks securely and the saw has adequate power to cut hardwoods with ease. The major reason I selected this saw was that you could remove the left side of the table, redrill the extension arms and mount them to the right side which gives you a portable table saw with a 25" rip capacity, without increasing the footprint of the saw.

I bought this saw about a year ago when I first started getting into woodworking. I would say it is a nice piece of equipment for a beginner on a limited budget, or for the amature woodworker who will not be using it every single day. I agree with the other reviews here about its positives:
1) Strong motor
2) Good carbide-tipped blade included in package
3) Sturdy stand
4) Solid rip fence

The miter gauge is pratically useless. It is way too sloppy
and has too much play. It is also an irritating non-standard
width, so you can't fit any aftermarket attachments to it.
The 90 and 45 degree stops are likewise not reliable. You
will need to check for accuracy with a square every time you
move the blade. And yes, it is LOUD!
I had one major assembly headache when I unpacked it. One of the bolts that attach the rubber feet to the base was mismatched to the threads of the hole, so I had to make a trip to the hardware store and find a replacement bolt.
Overall, this is a bargain saw that will work quite nicely
for a beginner, but if I had to make a living building furniture, this would not be my top choice.

I did read the other reviews on the poor quality of the mitre guage on this saw before purchasing, but didn't really think it would be a problem. I got the saw this summer and have put quite a few hours on it since.

Overall I like the quality of the saw but I am VERY diasppointed in the mitre guage and slot. Having a non-standard slot is a major problem. It really limits (make that prevents) your ability to use aftermarket products, and the poor quality of the one you get with the saw makes accurate cuts hit or miss. I can't imagine why Hitachi designed it this way. Usually a tool maker does that when they want to make sure you buy their aftermarket parts, but in this case even Hitachi doesn't offer any thing better.

The other minor annoyance I have is how difficult it is to adjust the saw for angled cuts. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but the wheel and lever interfere with each other; making it difficult to set and lock down on the angle you're shooting for.

I'll keep this for rough carpentry work but I'll have to replace it soon with a real quality cabinet saw.

Hitachi has released some pretty decent products in the past, but in my opinion this table saw is definitely not one of them.

It does have a few good points like a nice cast iron 3 piece table, and aluminum fence, and the body is sheet metal, and is not plastic, and the motor is plenty powerful.

Now for the complaints. The stand that comes with the saw looks nice but functions poorly. Sometimes when I saw a large piece of wood the entire thing slides on the floor, sometimes damaging the workpiece. Another problem I have with it is that there is no way to upgrade the size of the table, in fact there is only one upgrade to the entire unit, a dado insert. The miter slot isn't standard, so you can add absolutely no third party accessories that would fit in a standard miter slot. Concerning the 3 piece table, I have noticed that the two side pieces are sometimes nearly a 16th" off from the center piece and I have to unscrew them and realign them flat, I am afraid one day I will wear out the screws and it won't realign correctly. Yet another problem is with the blade guard. Great idea, but it just doesn't work. When I align the fence and run a board through, the board almost always gets stuck on the blade guard and I have to push very hard (not safe at all), then the stand (with no rubber feet) begins to slip and the whole table saw slides, making it extremely dangerous. I have since then installed the saw onto one of the Ridgid mobile utility carts, and turned the Hitachi stand into a chair(I haven't slid out yet, heh heh). I also removed the blade guard completely. Oh yeah, yet another complaint, This thing is EXTREMELY LOUD!!! Wear ear protection especially at the start up. Oh yeah I forgot about yet another problem. When you use the blade tilt mechanism and want to go to 45 degrees, the blade lock gets in the way and you end up busting your knuckles, and having to realign the lock so that you can move the tilt mechanism and lock the blade so it stays at the angle you want.

I have owned this saw for 9 months, and made a couple hundred cuts with it, and in conclusion I definitely wish I had bought another saw, probably a Ridgid. It always happens to me when I try to save a few bucks. If you are looking for a saw to do just a few cuts maybe buy a less expensive delta, but if you are looking for a semi-professional saw, you may want to overlook the Hitachi C10RA2.

Good Points: Good power, accurate fence, rack and pinion for blade height works very good, on off switch is located in an easy place, the stand is well-built, can rip upto 15" at right but you can buy 2700xl Rousseau table to expand its ripping capacity to 24" and upto 49" (with more accesories from the same comapay) electric brake works great! 36 tooth carbide blade is sharp. I love it. Not so Good Points: Miter slot is not standard 3/4", it is only 5/8" and you cannot use third party miter gauge. That is dissappointing, not so accurate miter and bevel cuts, heavier than Makita 2703 if you want to use as a portable saw, cutting height is maximum 3" so you cannot rip 4x4" in one pass. Overall: This is a very good saw for money. Tightening for bevelling at 45 degree is tricky but not as hard as I thought. I find cross bevelling is not as accurate as bigger saws.