M18 Fuel 9" Cut-Off Saw

This review was created as part of a paid affiliate program with the Home Depot.

My first order of business with this and every product review is a disclaimer: I am not a professional contractor. I am a farmer and a fine furniture maker. When it comes to construction and renovation projects, I’m a DIYer and weekend warrior. That said, I doubt many professional contractors will be reading my tool reviews. My goal in reviewing tools and products is to provide honest feedback based on my own use and experience with these tools to other regular folks like me- wanting to get their hands dirty, try new things, and get the best value for their hard earned dollars.

Let’s talk about another HUGE battery over gas innovation by Milwaukee

Milwaukee knocked this one out of the park. As someone who has had to rent a gas powered cutoff saw on multiple occasions, I was super excited to see a battery option now available. It’s quiet, it doesn’t need the same engine maintenance as the gas powered saws, and for occasional-use tools, that is always a huge plus. On a single battery charge, I was able to make four clean cuts on this concrete block wall to knock it down in a few blows with a sledge. Even on battery power, it delivered more than enough oomf to get the job done, and quickly at that. Another huge bonus on the battery option is the weight, this saw is 50% lighter than it’s gas competitors, even loaded with a 12AH battery, and I’ll never have to worry about running out of gas mid-job again.

This tool has the power to cut 3.4” of reinforced concrete and has all the tools necessary for adjustments and blade changes on board. Of course I love demolition, so I might be a little biased toward this tool, but after using it to demolish my friend Stu’s 4’ tall cinderblock wall, I can say it met every expectation I had and more. At a $500 price point, it is certainly not an impulse buy, but if you find yourself renting concrete saws as often as I do, it’s a solid investment. Milwaukee also offers a battery powered sprayer backpack with hookups for the saw for dust mitigation, but due to the price point of the saw itself, I wanted to try running it with just a hand pump sprayer for dust mitigation and it worked fantastically well. Obviously, that made it a two-person job, and the backpack does work really well, but I was actually more excited about using the backpack sprayer for farm applications, a battery powered backpack sprayer is something I’ve been waiting for for a LONG time. I spray organic fertilizer, vitamin water, and compost tea in my garden on a regular basis and the little hand-pump sprayers drive me nuts because they wear out quickly, often have broken seals, and are really heavy and awkward to lug around. This backpack sprayer has been a really fun solution to that problem. It has a filter in the pour-in spout to keep the machine running cleanly, and runs on the same M18 battery platform. At this point, the vast majority of tools I use around the farm are Milwaukee because they lead the charge with battery over gas solutions for so many things I regularly use- the battery trimmer, the pole saw and hedge trimmer, the chainsaw, and many more. With over 200 tools on the M18 platform, I am always finding fun solutions to problems via Milwaukee tools.