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woodworking bench vise made in usa, (upbeat jazz music) marc:today we're going to do a feature by feature, spec for spec review
of the new grizzly track saw. and that's not true at all, because i hate doing reviews like that. what i want to do is show you the saw, give you my initial impressions of it. it's going to be hardnot to do a comparision to some of the other toolsi've used in the past, primarily festool's track saw, it's only naturalbecause that's what i use
just about every day. so i will give you some perpsective on how the two systemsinteract with one another, and which one i think is the better buy. it's kind of going to be ahard thing to do, though, because this guy comes into the market at 230 dollars. which really, if you think about the track saw market,
we haven't really seenmuch in that price range. the makita, the dewalt, the festool, these are the ones that get the buzz at least here in the us. all of those start at over 400 dollars. so this guy coming in at 230, it's going to catch people's attention. so what i want to do for you, is let you know if even at 230 dollars,
is it worth your investment? if it is, then this really opens up the concept of track saw cutting to a whole different market of people who couldn't justify spending the money on those other more expensive units. i don't think we'regoing to be able to say that this thing competes with the higher quality units,
or the more expensive units, just in terms of that feature by feature sort of set up in overall quality. ultimately, grizzly's notlooking to do charity here. they're not just taking a hit on this and giving us a 500dollar saw for 230 bucks. they are probably going to have to use less quality parts. that's what it comes down to.
we're not going to geteverything with this. but what will we get? so what i want to do is show you some details on the saw itself, we'll take a close look, and then we'll actually go cut some wood, analyze the results, and sum it all up. so let's get started.
so let's put the saw on the track, and if you take a look at the outside, not really a whole lot going on on the surface, but it is nice and flat, which means you can you make those undercuts on the bottom of a door that's already hung. that's kind of a nice feature to have.
as you can see we havea dust collection port, we'll try to fit it on various things that i've got in the shop, especially my festool vacs. we'll see if that fits. this hole here is an access hole to adjust the riving knife. so if you push it down, you can see there's a riving knife
behind the blade. this is a common featureof all these track saws, and it's a very nice safety feature just as it is for the table saw. and you've got a little access hole here where you can make adjustments to that riving knife. and of course when you plunge the saw, that's also how you make blade changes.
all right, so let'slook at the other side, cause really this is whereall the magic is happening. so of course here is a depth stop for the plunge mechanism, so this way if you needto cut a half inch deep, three quarters, one inch, goes all the way to abouttwo and a half inches on the scale, you just lock it in place like this.
down here you have two adjustment knobs and this is what adjuststhe fit on the track so that you can get alooser or tighter fit. and these are just plastic cam knobs that as you turn them, the more the plasticengages with the rail, and you just tighten it down with the included allen wrench here. you've also of course got the ability
to tilt the saw up to 45 degrees and to do that you would loosen two of these knobs, one on each side, and then that allows youto make your adjustment, and lock it in place. i honestly don't use that feature on any of these saws very often, but it's something that a lot of people,
if you're making long bevel cuts, you might need. let's look at the plunge mechanism. now to plunge the saw, you've got this little safety release here and it works via this thumb knob at the top of the handle. so you push that up, and now you see it can goright into this channel.
one thing i'm noticing right away if you push it up too high, you actually make contact with the top of this channel. so i don't know if that's something that i can make an adjustment to. i don't really think i can. but it looks like if i push up too high, which is something i'mprobably going to do,
you push this thumb knob until stops, you're going to make contact with that. not a huge deal, but it's friction. maybe that will eventually wear down and it won't be an issue. the plunging mechanism itself feels fairly smooth. it's definitely a tighter spring.
i can already tell you it's much tighter than something like the festool. because this handle hereis practically vertical, you are starting in a little bit of an uncomfortable position here, and as you push your thumb in and push down, doing that one handed is actually a lot more work
than it is on the festool for instance. the spring, the spring here is what actually resists the motions of the plunge. and that just looks like a pretty heavy duty spring, which explains why it's a little harder to push this guy down. ultimately we'll see ifthat's a factor in use.
now here's the guide rail. if you're familiar with guide rails, this does actually look quite similar to just about everything else out there. the saw itself rides on this inner track, you've got these little low friction plastic strips here that just help the sawslide along smoothly. on the under side,
we have these grippy strips. that's what i'm going tocall them, grippy strips. and that actually helpsit from slipping around. in fact, i rarely use clampswhen i use these tracks. and this one looks like it's no exception. it has enough grip withthe weight of the saw and the pressure on the ply that i almost never feel the need to use a clamping system.
although you probablyshould just to be safe. on the outside, you've got a splinter guard, it's a rubberized material that basically puts likea little bit of pressure there right at the cut line, and that's what gives you that really super smooth cut. this is all consistent on just about
every track saw guide that i've ever seen. you also have two slots on the under side, and that's for using things like clamps and other implements that, maybe other accessoriesthey might come up with. and it's just yourfairly standard t track. now when i put the saw on it, you can see the sawitself has a groove here that goes onto the rail,
lines up nicely. and you just push it along. and that's where thesetwo cam action knobs come in handy, to make sure that there's no slop. when you have it sittingon the track here, you want to rock it back and forth. and there is maybe, that's a tiny amount, that's a negligible amount
that i'm hearing there. i wouldn't worry about that at all. so mine is already adjusted. and let's see. the motion is good. normally i put wax on these. there's no wax on there right now. so it's probably the amount of friction i would expect.
the only thing i'm a little bit concerned about, i don't know how it's really going to impact cutting, is the fact that thereis some wobble here. all right, so i'm not sure, what is the perfect vertical cut here? is it putting pressure to the left? which i could kind of do this way,
favoring this side, or is it when i putpressure on the blade side, which lifts this side up? now initially you might think, what's the big deal, it's just a little bit of wobble. well, frankly, that's a red flag to me because part of the joy of using one of these saws is gettingtable saw quality cuts
from the circular saw. if you're breaking down sheets of plywood, it's great to have a clean table saw quality edge that you can then use if you do decide to use a table saw, you don't have to make extra cuts after the fact. i'd like this to be a finecutting tool if i can.
so that amount of wobble is a little bit worrisome, because that is goingto lead to vibration, and it's going to lead to the blade moving in and out of the work piece, creating an edge that's not as good as it could be. so we'll so how much ofa factor that truly is when we make the cut.
but it's definitely something i'm keeping my eye on. so let's head over to my plywood cutting area, which i call the floor over there and we'll cut some material. befoe i make any cuts, i really want this to be a fair apples to apples comparision
with what i'm already familiar with, so i will wax the track, lube it up a little withsome renaissance wax. a little bit goes a longway with this stuff. and i do wax pretty muchthe whole track here. and it really does help toreduce a lot of friction. i wax the bottom of thetrack saw itself as well. so i am going to try to use this with my festool dust extractor,
and it looks like it'sa pretty dead on fit. so no problem there. so i'm just going to do a quick cross cut, and the reason i'm doing a cross cut and not a rip, is because i really want to see what this thing can do. how well does the blade perform? how good does that splinter guard work?
the cross cut is where we're going to see the most tear out if it's going to happen. the rip cut is kind of the easy one. so we'll do a quick cross cut, we'll analyze both the keepr piece and the off cut, and see what the results are. so first impressions after making a cut. number one, the first thing i noticed,
was there was quite a bit of dust. significantly more dust than i typically get from something like the festool track saw. but as i said earlier, i don't think that's the comparision we should make here. what we should be looking at, is how much better is this
than a traditional circular saw with maybe a home made edge guide. and it is quite a bit better, because a lot of the dust went into the extractor, and what didn't go in there seems to be really localized to this off cut piece. it didn't spew all over the shop
like it typically does with a circular saw. so in that case, this is a vast improvement. the other thing i'm alittle concerned about is that spring. most of the time when i cut plywood, it just happens thatat the end of the cut, i'm extended with one arm,
and that's the weakest position to be in in terms of wrist strength, right? so as you're far out like this, it wants to fight you. it's a very strong spring, and it's pushing back atthe extent of that cut. so that has me a little bit concerned. i can handle it, it's not like i'm not strong enough
to hold it down, but there may be people who don't have strong wrists who can't handle it. and i wouldn't want to do that 10 times in a row. that would be veryuncomfortable after awhile. so with this particular unit, i would say even more than just for general safety reasons
that you want to usetwo hands for comfort, you're probably going to want to use two hands throughout the cut. it's just, you know as well as i do sometimes with four byeight sheets of ply, if you're breaking them down, you end up in positions like this, where your arm is all the way out and there's not a wholelot you can do about it.
so let's take a close look at the cut quality, cause that's really where the rubber meets the road here. or where the rubber strippy dealies meet the plywood. so here's my keeper piece, here's my off-cut. and of course the keeper piece
is the one we're most concerned with. if you can get an off cut that's nice and clean, that's great too, because then you have a nice clean finished edge to work with for the next cut. but it's not absolutely essential. the keeper piece is really where
we're mostly concerned. looking at the edge, there is tear out, a minor amount of tear out all the way down the edge top and bottom. now a minor amount of tear out to me is just not that big of a deal, because i'm going tosand this surface anyway.
and a little bit of sanding will take care of that. it's when the tearout gets a little bit more substantial. i've got a couple of spots where it's gone back a little bit further from the edge. that type of tear out is going to very visiblein the final piece.
especially if this is something that gets edge banded. the joint between the edge banding and the plywood a little divot like thatis going to be a problem. if you're just putting this into a dado, and this is like a structural piece, it's not goign to be a big deal. you're never going tosee something like that.
but overall, not a terrible result. not bad at all. and especially when you compare this to what a traditional circular saw does, even with a decent blade. a lot of times the result is going to be a lot worse than this. so the off cut did not fare as well. there's quite a bit of tear out
all the way down, and i've also got tear out that ranges back about a quarter of an inch from the edge. which means when i clean this one up with another pass, making this my keeper piece, i'd have to come back a whole quarter inch to get past that tear out.
still fairly servicable, but not quite as perfect as i might hope with a track saw. ultimately though, compared to a traditional circular saw, this cut is very clean. and very straight. and i think that's really what they were setting out to do
in the first place. now because a lot of these track saw systems look so similar, in fact some of them just seem to be carbon copies of one another, it's natural that everyone wants to know, can they work together? can i use let's say a festool ts55 with a grizzly track, and vice versa?
also clamps and things like that? will they work? so let's test it out and see. i actually don't know. we'll find out together. so first, let's take the festool saw and drop it on the grizzly rail. i'm going to make sure that my
cams are fully open so that those aren't in the way. and it sort of drops onto the rail to an extent, but it is not going down all the way. it's certainly not going to move on this thing either, so it's definitely too tight. you can look at the festool track here.
not only do you have these green cams that are going to fine tune your fit, you also got the other side of the track which has these little metal tabs. and those are actually what's blocking it from going down all the way. so that's a no go. even if you could, let's say you were super motivated
and a little crazy and you decide to file these down, maybe that would makeroom for it to drop on, you have to be concerned about where the blade is going to contact this outside edge here. so let's take a look at that. just plunge down a little bit, you can see we're making contact
with the aluminum rail. so if you were so motivated to use the grizzly track with the festool saw, it's going to be a destructive process. you're going to have to do a modification to the saw itself, which will most likely void its warranty, and you will do some modification
to the track by cutting it. so i don't know that that's necessarily a great way to go. so hopefully that answers that question. let's also, just for kicks, see if the grizzly sawfits on the festool track. that seems to be okay. got a litle bit of wobble here, but i would bet that if iloosen up the cam knobs,
well, well, well, look at that. that actually does work. but remember, we had a blade placement problem. if the festool was cutting into the track when you put the grizzlyon the festool track, what's going to happen? the blade is going to be out away from the splinter guard.
and in fact, i think that's beyond the capacity of most of these splinter guards. so even if you put a new one on there, i'm not sure that you're going to get it to go out far enough that it's going to work properly for this. i don't know who would want to go this direction,
using the grizzly saw with the festool track, but if you wanted to technically it kind of works. you're just not going to get the benefit of that splinter guard. now unfortunately i don't have any of the grizzly accessories to test out, like clamps and things like that,
but i do have festool clamps and we'll see if those fit into the grizzly track. it's a very standard t track. so that's not really any surprise that those work. and this is one of the little clamping dealy whackers. and that seems to work just fine.
so yeah, the festool stuff does work with the grizzly track. and based on what i see here, i gotta think, and this is just sortof an educated guess, that the grizzly accessories will also work with the festool track. the dimensions of these t slots just aren't that different.
so let's sum this whole thing up. really it comes down to are you a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person? if you're a half empty kind of person, you're going to compare it to the festool, the dewalt, the makita, and you're going to seethat things fall short in a number of areas.
number one, dust collection. number two, the cut quality. it's a little bit more of a frayed cut than we get with those other units. number three, the wobbling. that's kind of a concern for me. i'm not really happy that it has that, and i'm concerned about what long term what that's going to mean.
i'd have to use it a lot more to tell you for sure ifit has a major impact, but it does have me alittle bit concerned. the other thing is the plunge mechanism. i mentioned it a couple times already. i just feel like it's too strong of spring, i think it needs to bea little bit more loose. it's not that comfortable to use it.
so that's glass half empty. but if you're looking at the glass half full perspective, we're going to compare this to other circular saws on the market. firt of all, you've got amuch more controlled cut. because now we have atrack that we can use. even if you build your own guide, a lot of times you have to keep
the saw pushed up against that guide throughout the entire cut, otherwise you tend to drift away. with this, it's a true track and it's holding it in a position so that all you have to do is push the saw forward. you don't have to worry about it sort of meandering awayfrom your cut line.
that's a great thing. cut quality. this guy right out of the box cuts with higher quality than any other circular saw standard circular saw that i've used in the past. it certainly cuts better than my porter-cable
which has an upgraded freud blade on it that's meant for plywood. so definitely kudos in that regard. dust collection. dust collection is going to be great compared to a regular circular saw where the dust is just all over the place and then going into your lungs. this will collect a good portion of it,
and it seems like it does a fair job of directing the saw dust into a place where it's not going up into the air. which is quite a bit of an advantage. so really, that's what it comes down to. is what are you lookingfor out of this saw? if you just want to break the plywood down into smaller piecesfor further processing,
something like this is going to be great. using the stock blade that comes with it, with this particular set up, there may be other blades that might improve the cut quality. but as is, i don'tconsider the cut quality finish quality. i would want to take those pieces and take them over to the table saw
and cut them again so i can get a nice crisp clean edge with no tear out. so if you're looking toget finish quality cuts, which i certainly depend on my festool saw to do, you're not going to get it necessarily from whatcomes out of the box. maybe people have different standards,
i don't know, maybe for someone itmight be finish quality. for me and my work, what i consider to be fine furniture, i don't think it's finish quality. so there is that to be concerned about. but if all you're looking to do is have something that guides a decent quality circular saw
without wavering, and you want to be able to break out sheets of plywood on the ground like i do, using something like this, this will get you there. and it's going to get you there for 230 bucks as of april 2013. so we'll see where the pricing goes. but it is not a festool track saw.
it is not a dewalt or a makita. it is what it is. it's in a whole different class, and it is intended toaccomplish a different goal and sort of satisfy a different market. i don't think the saw is really going to take any customers away from festool, i think what it's going to do
is make a lot more people aware of what a track saw in general can do, and what the advantages are. and hopefully more people will own them, and will know the joys of being able to just drop one of these onto a line, cut it, and go. which is pretty cool. so i'll probably be giving this unit away
in the future. i don't really have a need of it, but i think this willmake a great giveaway. so we'll have to work on that. maybe we'll do a giveaway with this video. okay, so thanks for watching, everybody. i hope you have sometrack saws in your future because they are great to own. i highly recommend them,
regardless of who you go with, and we'll catch you next time. and i just realized, it would be really dumbnot to give this saw away with this paritcular video so how about we do that. go to thewoodwhisperer.com find this video, and you'll see a form embedded in the post
where you just fill out your name, and email and you are in the running to win the saw. now we ask that you only fill your name and email out one time. you can do it multiple times, the form will let youdo it a hundred times. but i have to warn you, we have a rule in the spagnuolo household
after doing this for a number of years. if people don't follow instructions, especially if they sumbit their form 10 times, 20 times, we just delete them all. i don't know if that's legal, i don't know if it's even morally right, but sometimes it feels really good. so i urge you, please,
fill it out one time. and you'll be entered to wina pretty cool saw for free. the other thing is, we do ship internationally. everybody always wants to know do we ship outside of the us? absolutely. for a giveaway that we're in charge of, we never keep it localized to the us
or even north america. we ship anywhere. so go to thewoodwhisperer.com fill out that form and i hope you win. i actually do, i thought about it. i really hope you win. good luck.