marc:well i've got some coffee and a pretty feminine mug and a new tool to play with. that's how i like to start my mornings. (cheerful music) marc:now this my friendsis the dewalt tracksaw. now if you're not familiarto grossly simplify this the tracksaw is nothingmore than a circular saw that's made to ride onthis rail this track
and this way you get niceperfect straight cuts really table saw qualitycuts that you would never normally be able to getfrom a circular saw. the other thing that you have with it is this plungeaction that allows you to start and stop cuts inthe middle of a workpiece so it's pretty handy. now this particular sawis getting a lot of buzz and i think part of the reason is,
at least a large partof the reason is because of the fact that it'sthe real first competitor for the festool line of plunge saws so a lot of people arewatching it just to see what happens in the market to see what, you know, what changestake place as a result of this being out there. as far as i'm concernedcompetition is always good because competition breeds innovation
and it will be interestingto see what sort of retaliation maybe other tool companies have in mind to one-up this product and in the end the consumer gains. now before we go anyfurther i just want to say that my associations withany other tool companies will have absolutelyno affect, no bearing, and no influence on my ability to review this tool accurately and fairly.
now although that was ajoke this does bring me to my favorite part ofevery "product review" video that i do and that's my little disclaimer. as always i'm not a reviewer. i just want to pass on myimpressions of a product so that you can make an informed decision when you have to decidewhich tool you want to buy. now today my goal reallyis to just take a look at the dewalt unit, set it up,
it's right out of the box, i haven't touched anything. get it ready to make some cuts. we'll make a few sample cuts with it and i'll give myimpressions of it as i go. now as a full disclosure festool is a sponsor of the show. i've been using a ts 55festool's smaller plunge saw for several years now.
i bought it when i firststarted up my business and it has been a great performer so my perspective when i analyse this unit is going to be completelyas much as i would like to detach from that inall fairness i can't help it i'm influenced by the fact that i've used this tool for the last few years so something as simple as looking at the plunge action on this is gonna be
a little awkward to me so i'm gonna try and keep my opinion out of it and just try to show youthat this is different and let you decidewhether or not that makes a functional difference to you in the end. now the bottom line isthere's a lot of details. there's a lot of numbersthat you could go through when comparing thesetwo and you ask dewalt they'll give you 15 thingsthat makes their saw better.
ask festool they're goingto give you 15 things that makes their saw better. in reality unless you'reusing these 2 saws side-by-side every singleday you're probably not going to notice those things. so for me i really like to go in and notice the things that you are going to confront a lot. the setup, changing your blades,
adjusting the bevel cut,how clean the cut is. things like that mightmake a difference to you. let's just jump right in and see what we can in setting this up. well first things first. a boring black and white manual we'll look at that later and here's a nice looks like a quick reference manualthat kind of just gives
you a very fast rundown, but nice colored picturesthat's the easiest thing for me to follow andi'm pretty familiar with the concept so i'm just goingto go through this first and see how that works out. now the first thing we need to do and this is really going to go with any type of a saw like this you want to tighten up the tolerance here.
you want to make sure - hear that slop that's in there we want to take that away. now there are 2 dials thatyou turn to adjust that and get that slop out of there, but you don't want to go too tight because you still wantto be able to move it back and forth so typicallythese are hand tightened. in this case it looks like they've got
a little locking screw at the top. and you're going to need a screwdriver to loosen that. okay, so i'm just goingto turn it clockwise which seems to be wrong. this one looks like itsgot to go counterclockwise. okay, it's not moving there so tighten it. let's do the back. thisone does look clockwise.
let's see how it goes. okay, no play. it's tightened it up a little bit, but i always recommend waxing these rails and waxing the base of the saw itself it will help it slide a lot smoother. that's not too bad. now briefly i want to take a look at the blade changing functionality on this.
for me personally it doesn't really make that much of a difference because i don't change blades that often, but if you're cutting different materials or you're just going through a lot of wood and you need to replace this blade a lot that's something that mightbe of interest to you. so let me show you how it works. you just push this button back,
back here push that down, then plunge the saw all the way into its full plunge positionand pull the arm around. that locks it in place. okay, now at this point you just get your onboard allen wrench. okay, and i push down on this little lock. it even has a little picture of a lock. that will lock -
see 'cause the arbor just spins freely. push this down that locks it in place so we're going to turn it clockwise not counterclockwise. okay, and that loosens it. okay, take that guy all the way out and the blade should slide right out. there you go. pretty nice looking blade. not too bad. okay, solet's put this back in
of course to lock it in place again just lock out the arbor turn it clockwise niceand snug and that's it. now to disengage this locked position i'm gonna turn the lever back. bring everything back upand we're still locked so i have to push the trigger mechanism the safety up and pull the trigger and now it's completely unlocked.
actually all you need to do is do the little thumb safety and that pops the lock button up and now it's free to work as normal. and now just for comparison purposes i don't think i'd be doingthis video must justice if i didn't show youhow the festool works. basically you pull thislittle fast fix lever down like that, plunge thesaw and now it actually
locks in position and the arbor is already automatically locked outwhen it's in this position. you would just in thesame exact way loosen loosen this bolt, take the blade off, put a new blade back on, tighten it up and when you're done take the fast fix off and you're rolling again so definitely a lot easier on the festool, but again it depends on howmuch you use this thing.
for me quick blade changes just don't make that much difference to me. now the great thing about a saw like this is that kickback is very unlikely. you're riding on a guided track. you're cutting nice and straight. furthermore, it has a riving knife on it. okay, see that in the back and that works like yoursplitter on a table saw.
okay, same exact thing we're riving [unintelligible) from a table saw. okay, so as you're cutting there's very little likelihood thatit's going to kickback, but what dewalt's done here that's a little bit different thananything i've seen before is they have an extra feature. okay, you just disengagethis dial back here just with your fingersit's sort of spring loaded.
when you do that, okay, there's a little plasticdo-hickey back here that has a spring loaded arm and what that does is itphysically stops the saw from being able to travel backwards. you could push forward like normal, but as soon as you try to come back it's locked out so what that really is is an extra precaution against kickback
so that if somehow evenwith the riving knife somehow this thingdecides to kickback at you it's not going to go anywhere on this rail so kind of a neat feature. okay, i'm just gonna plugthis guy into the vac. it looks like just about any standard vac will fit on here and thefestool line fits perfectly. now we'll make our first cut. now remember when you make this first cut
you are actually establishingthe zero clearance line on these little rubberpads that are on the bottom so this is actually a pretty critical cut so i like to have theentire surface supported and i'll go over theentire thing in one shot. it's also interesting to note that on the dewalt guide railyou can use both sides you can flip the saw the other way and there's another side that's usable.
all right, let's give this a shot. now on that first cutthere was a lot more dust than i would have expected so my next cut i'm gonna do where thecutoff piece is actually on the right side of the blade. that first cut the right side of the blade was left wide open and exposed and that, you know, insituations like that it's nearly impossible topull all of that dust up
so in this case wherethe blade is surrounded by wood on both sides it'sthe best case scenario for dust collection. i'm also going to make sure that the blade doesn't go as deep as it did before. i want it to go just deep enough so that it goes through the wood so let's take a look atthe depth adjustment here. seems pretty straighforward.
you just loosen this little knob and turn the dial up towherever you want it to stop. interesting difference to note here is the fact that thisis of course in inches and all the festoolstuff is in millimetres. to tell you the truth inever really use mine. i'm always cutting through 1/4" ply so once it's set it's usually good enough, but having it here ininches is pretty convenient.
so we'll go for just alittle over 3/4 of an inch. and before we look at the cut quality i want to show you theplunge action on this. when i first saw this in use being used to the festoolwhich is really just a single pivot point. okay, the festool comes in like this which is very easy to do with one hand. you can do it with two hands, okay.
my concern with this design was the fact that the plunge motion actually has a little bit of a forwardaction in it as well as down so my fear was becauseof the way it pivots or the fact that it doesn'tpivot from a single point the whole thing is going down it made me feel like i might be actually pushing forward as i'm trying to push down which when you're trying to plunge in
a very specific position that can be bad. so i'm actually pleasedwith what i've seen so far with these first few cuts because it's not moving forwardlike i thought it would so as i push down andpush forward two hands this is a no-brainer it works very well. i don't really feel anyinclination to push forward. one-handed is taking some getting used to. now this could certainly be for, you know,
the fact that i've been usingthis other stuff for years and now i'm trying something different, but initially it's not a verynatural motion for my hand. when i was trying it at first i found that i was pushing more with my thumb because that's what ido on the other unit. but what you have to dois actually push more with the base of your hand which makes it go down as well as forward
and that gives you the motion you need to plunge properly. if you're pushing just with the front with your thumb andyou're leading that way you're just gonna push the saw. two hands, again, no-brainer. it's very well balanced so something to think aboutvery different action, but once it's plunged it'soperating the same way.
now the cut quality here. this is really good. we have some baltic birch ply. there's a lot of plies inhere. we went crossgrain to that top veneer layer and this is a really nice, clean cut. limited if any tear-outat all along the edge. now the offcut is where we can make a distinction here.
the offcut does have alittle bit of tear-out and it's very, very minor. now i mean this is beingpicky at this point, but it does have a little bit. now if you're in asituation where you need to absolutely conserveevery bit of material and your offcuts are justas important as the cut that your tool is on you want to make sure that you have protection onboth sides of that blade.
now, unfortunately thedewalt unit doesn't seem to have a splinterguard that you could put on this side of the blade. i do know that the festooldoes have that feature so that's kind of a plus. now i'm gonna make thesame cut using a festool. just out of curiosity i would love to see a side-by-side comparisonof the two cut qualities just to see if i can notice anything.
okay, now this is very interesting. the cut from the festool on this side and there is no splinterguard installed on that unit so i'm comparing apples to apples here. the blade side of thecut is actually cleaner. i mean it's perfect. it's as perfect as i canimagine a blade cutting cross cutting a piece of plywood. the dewalt was fantastic.it was a good edge,
but the festool actuallylooks a little bit tighter. it looks a little bit cleaner, but the offcut side on thedewalt has less tear-out than the offcut side of the festool if that makes any sense. now the good thing about the festool is you can install that splinter guard to get rid of that extra and probably make it just as good as the quality of the cut
on this side of the blade, but right out of the box, no extra blade guardsit's very interesting the festool has the cleanercut on the left hand side. the dewalt has thecleaner cut on the offcut so take that for what it's worth. so now i just going to take a look at some of the bevelling features. that's something thati always found unique
about these track saw systems and how you cut bevels and it's fundamentally different than any other circular saw. normally on a circular saw you change your bevel angle and allof a sudden you actually change the point of attack of the blade so you can't hypothetically let's say make a straight cut than adjust to 45 degrees
and make a cut on that same line because the blade actually moves to a different position. i know for a fact on the festool as you turn it to 45degrees you don't even have to move your straight edge. you'll cut right at that top corner edge and cut your 45 degree angle so i just want to see how this one works
in that same scenario. first of all you got alittle wing nut dealy at the front here and one in the back pretty standard. tilt it to 45. we got a red line here that tells us where we are now. the good thing is itgoes beyond 45 degrees. it goes up to 47. the only negative that i see here
is that there is no positive stop or at least there doesn'tseem to be a positive stop at 45 you could just go all the way to 47 and the little plastic pointer here is not real exact it's pretty rough, but we're talking a circular saw here so i don't know how muchcrap you want to give it for something like that, but it's a pretty rough adjustment,
relatively rough adjustment. so i'm at what looks like 45 degrees and i'm gonna lock it down here. now when i take a close look at this edge the important thing to notice is that the zero clearance strip is right on the edge of that cutwhich means just because we tilted to 45 degrees doesn't mean we're going to mess upthe rubber guide here
which really, really comes in handy. if it did that if itmessed it up everytime kind of like going 45 on your table saw that would kind of be a bummer so this works as it should. the cut is relatively clean. there's a little bit oftear-out or lift on there and really this is somethingthat would sand away, you know, it's being a littlebit nit-picky at this point,
but still really good cut. okay, and for comparisonpurposes let's go back to the festool go to 45 - oops, it's not loose all the way. okay, this one does havea positive stop at 45 so you're pretty confidentwhen you get there. and now you got the cutofffrom the dewalt here. it's pretty smooth too. you know on overallsmoothness of cut though
at least on this cut and a lot of this could be user influence interms of how fast i move across the workpiece asfar as the smoothness of the cut i'm going tohave to give the edge to festool on this one. their cut is a little bit smoother. all right, so what's the verdict? well, you tell me. the bottom line is theseare two killer saws.
both designs are very good. this one clearly is heavily influenced by the festool design and i think they did a pretty good job of copying it. there's a few things that are different, but for the most part you are going to be really hard-pressed to notice a in the shop, in your facevery obvious difference between the performance of this saw
and the performance ofone of the festool saws. so i don't really think it's something to stress out about ifyou're in the market for one of these becausethe bottom line is either one is gonna be light years better than what you were probably using before if you were just doing your own sort of straight-edge with acircular saw kind of setup. so i mean i got to givethem both a thumbs up.
now there may be littletiny details here and there and i'm gonna give youlinks to a few blog posts and forum posts that i found that give a very detailed comparisonof the two units, but for me it comes downto more big picture things and if i were in the position of having to choose which one would i buy that's probably where i would take it. i would start to thinkabout the big picture
and what i mean by that is if you are buying thissaw and the straight-edge and that's really allyou're interested in getting you're not interested in building sort of a system that all workstogether, you know, there's nothing wrong withgetting the dewalt at all, but if you are the typeof person who wants to build up a system that works in unison so let's say you plan onbuying the festool jigsaw
or you plan on buying one of their routers or their vac or their multifunction table which by the way is a critical component to utilizing and getting the most out of one of these saws. if you plan on going that route now you got something to think about because they play well together. they all take the same plug.
they all hook up nicely to the vac system and it's a family of products. now this is the only product at least that i know of so far that dewalt has that works with the track. i'm sure they'll come up with other things as time goes on, butas it stands right now there isn't sort ofthis overriding umbrella family of products approach
that all just works well together. so, you know, that's a compelling thing i think if you're tryingto build your shop up so like i said it's abigger picture concept because the performanceon both of these is great, but that may be what this comes down to, you know, if you can't really pick apart the performance specs more than that you may have no choice but to say
okay which one just in the long run makes the most sense. so you know, take a look at them both. look at the links that i'mgonna post with this video and just make a decision for yourself. two great saws. honestly, i don't think youcan go wrong either way. they're both awesome products, really, really cool products
and will really changethe way that you handle sheet goods in your workshop so check them both out.