If the term ‘home made miter saw’ instantly instills frightening images of severed limbs into your head, you’re not alone. A quick internet search will yield some pretty hokey tool builds, we’ve even featured a few here on hackaday. This saw is different. [Pekka] made a pretty cool saw for cutting very accurate angles in wood.

This saw was purpose built with one goal in mind: cutting wood that will be glued together for use in segmented turning. Segmented turning is shaping a piece of wood stock that is composed of many different types of wood. This results in a very visually interesting product.

Most of the saw is made from plywood. The hinge and supports for the arbor are beefy off-the-shelf pillow blocks. A 3-phase motor with speed control transmits power to the arbor via a belt. Belt tension is adjusted by sliding the motor further back along the motor mount base. [Pekka] took care so that the entire pivoting assembly was nearly balanced adding to the ease of use.Typical miter saws rotate the blade to achieve different angles of cuts. This design rotates the saw fence.

For safety there are a pair of polycarbonate blade guards and a micro switch on the handle that won’t let the saw start unless it is depressed. The micro switch has a secondary function also, when let go it applies an electronic brake to the motor so that the spinning blade does not touch the work piece when lifting the blade back up.