We study a family of finitely generated residually finite small-cancellation groups. These groups are quotients of $F_2$ depending on a subset $S$ of positive integers. Varying $S$ yields continuously many groups up to quasi-isometry.

We show that every isometric action on a Cantor set is conjugate to an inverse limit of actions on finite sets; and that every faithful isometric action by a finitely generated amenable group is residually finite.

A tubular group G is a finite graph of groups with ℤ2 vertex groups and ℤ edge groups. We characterize residually finite tubular groups: G is residually finite if and only if its edge groups are separable. Methods are provided to determine if G is residually finite. When G has a single vertex group an algorithm is given to determine residual finiteness.

We prove that the variety consisting of all involutory inflations of normal bands is the unique maximal residually finite variety consisting of combinatorial semigroups with involution.

We prove that certain tree products of finitely generated Abelian groups have Property E. Using this fact, we show that the outer automorphism groups of those tree products of Abelian groups and Brauner’s groups are residually finite.

We derive a Mal'cev condition for congruence meet-semidistributivity and then use it to prove two theorems. Theorem A: if a variety in a finite language is congruence meet-semidistributive and residually less than some finite cardinal, then it is finitely based. Theorem B: there is an algorithm which, given m < ω and a finite algebra in a finite language, determines whether the variety generated by the algebra is congruence meet-semidistributive and residually less than m.

We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for $\text{HNN}$-extensions of cyclic subgroup separable groups with cyclic associated subgroups to be cyclic subgroup separable. Applying this, we explicitly characterize the residual finiteness and the cyclic subgroup separability of $\text{HNN}$-extensions of abelian groups with cyclic associated subgroups. We also consider these residual properties of $\text{HNN}$-extensions of nilpotent groups with cyclic associated subgroups.

We derive a criterion for a generalized free product of groups to be cyclic subgroup separable. We see that most of the known results for cyclic subgroup separability are covered by this criterion, and we apply the criterion to polygonal products of groups. We show that a polygonal product of finitely generated abelian groups, amalgamating cyclic subgroups, is cyclic subgroup separable.