I've got one...no, two...of their industrial circular saws, both needing repair (bearings), that I like better than the modern stuff. The shoe is in two parts: if you remove one part, you've got an abbreviated shoe that lets you cut closer to a wall. I've never used that feature, but it's nice to know it's there.
The body is sandcast aluminum, and some marketing genius figured out that, if they left it in the rough sandcast state, they could market it as a "non-glare" finish, thus saving the cost of the polishing step AND making the money saved into a virtue at the sales point.