Ooooh! It oscillates

If your arm gets tired from making all those repetitive up and down movements, while trying to cut through the slings and arrows of outrageous DIY, then you probably need a jigsaw.

[NO, not a 500 piece picture of a thatched cottage with too much sky and one piece missing, but a powered cutting device with interchangeable blades.]

I have worn out a couple of these wonderful tools, but the present incarnation [and best so far] in my shed is:

BOSCH PST 700 PAE

This is a 550watt jigsaw with a great appetite for work [I’m glad one of us has], and a large range of blades for cutting all sorts of materials. Besides the normal wood, metal, plastic, extra fine cut, scroll cutting and long reach blades, three useful specialist ones are:

- Worktop: This has reversed teeth so that it cuts on the downstroke, enabling you to make cutouts on worktops from the right side without chipping great lumps out of the laminate surface.

- Tile: This has a tungsten carbide encrusted edge so you can cut awkward tiles [and nice ones] to fit round pies etc. It leaves a nice smooth finish, unlike nibbling away with pincers, and is a LOT less effort than using a rod saw mounted in a hacksaw frame.

- Double sided: this has teeth front and rear so that you can cut in both directions. This makes cutting into right angled corners a lot easier, as you don’t have to turn the saw round and approach from the other direction.

The blades are held using Bosch’s ‘SDS’ system: a couple of turns of the plastic lever, and release/tightening is done. This is a vast improvement over older methods- no more fiddly allen key of extra long screwdriver to lose.

A similar method is also used to adjust the baseplate which tilts up to 45 degrees for bevel cuts, and can be pulled back so that you can cut within 1cm of a wall- even I don’t mind getting a handsaw out f
or the last little bit.

The cutting action is really fast because this tool has ‘pendulum’ [no, I’m not swinging the lead] action: before the upstroke, the blade swings forward. This lessens the work you have to do, and prolongs the blade life- it can lead to excessive splintering in wood, and jamming in thin sheet metal, but there is a lever to step the pendulum action down to zero if needed.

The jigsaw comes with a fitted, clear plastic slide-down guard at the front, which is part of the dust collection system- Bosch supply a vacuum cleaner adaptor to plug in the rear, near the cable entry. Together, these make a reasonable job of keeping your work clean.

It’s satisfying to find a 4 metre cable as standard [I must be easily satisfied?], as it makes those long cuts so much easier.

The tool is well balanced, and the body is sculpted to fit your hand well, so you have good control when the going gets tough. The extra large trigger is an electronic speed control, up to 3000 strokes per minute, with the option to lock on via a button on the side, and preset the maximum speed with a knurled knob in the trigger itself.

The only oddity is a cavity in the body of the tool for storing two or three blades, with little cover that clips over. I have found that it doesn’t stay closed, so providing an entertaining game of ‘hunt the blade’ amongst all the shavings and sawdust.

That one quibble apart, over the three years, I have found this a well thought out and reliable machine, versatile and comfortable to use. It may be labelled DIY, but gives performance acceptable for trade use.