owen. wrote:
Aren't the perfect cuts more due the blade? The dust collection would be nice, but then what job do you give your kid? :P
I have the universal track saw thingy from Lee Valley as suggested by jroisa that I'm fond of suggesting, I'm sure it's completely impractical for high output work like you do, but for a home guy... I can nail my cuts every time with reasonable amounts of setup. I'm actually going to use it this weekend to build my new built-in desk out of rough cut fir ~1x~10s that will get hand planed after being laminated together... and by hand planed I mean I'm going to attack them with a 9" sander/polisher.
A blade can only do so much. Fibre support on the side where the blade is exiting the wood, not cutting in to the wood, is also crucial. That's why people use things like zero clearance inserts on their table saw. The motor on the Festool is strong enough that, supposedly, you could plow through 2" thick material without motor strain. When you're fighting for power, often the blade can wave leaving deeper saw marks. Also, I believe, but am not sure, that the arbor on the festool is a lot more solid and true then what you would find on a dewalt or makita circ saw. The difference between a good setup and bad one is the difference between barely having to sand your ripped edge, and spending 10 minutes per cut sanding down saw marks. You probably wouldn't notice much difference between your set up and the festool unless you were trying to make repeated cuts on pre-finished plywood or very thick stock and had to sand the edges down for edge banding or something like that.
I looked at the Lee Valley track saw guide. Those look solid. The draw for the festool really boils down to
1) Seamless integration for dust extraction
2) I believe they have some bells and whistles the basic track saw doesn't in terms of ease of layout, making accurate, repeatable cuts quickly, stops, plunge cutting, etc.
3) Bling factor
Long Chile was a silly place.