Sheet Good Breakdown with a Track Saw - Squaring large pieces?

[Marty Tippin]

I've just ordered a DeWalt track saw with the standard track (59" I think) (thanks to an unexpected bonus at work!) and my first project for it is an outfeed table from FWW plans. I've got 4 sheets of 3/4" Birch to knock down into parts.

A few of the cuts for the table are fairly large - on the order of 30 x 40 or something close, and I'm trying to figure out the best procedure for cutting those pieces squarely and accurately with just the track saw. I'm pretty sure I can manage to get two edges parallel, but not sure the best way to square the other two edges. I have a carpenter's square that I don't trust and otherwise the best I have is a 12" sliding square which I can't see being very useful for squaring up along a 40" line.

The smaller pieces (less than 24" wide) are easy - I'll just get them cut parallel and roughly to size and run them through the cross-cut sled on the table saw to square up the ends.

But for the pieces that are too big for the cross-cut sled?

[glenn bradley]

3-4-5 rule still works (http://workshop.lifehacker.com/use-the-3-4-5-rule-to-square-a-perfect-corner-1696690979). You would want a rule of some decent length that you trusted.

[Peter Aeschliman]

I just use a straight, long ruler against an accurate 12" speed square to mark the line... then I line the track up and cut. It helps to clamp the track down to make sure it doesn't move on you.

If you need absolute precision (like, square to 1/64" or less over the length of cut) then I don't think a track saw is the right tool for the job, frankly. Your best bet for that is either a big table saw sled or a sliding table saw.

Thanks,
Peter

[Jamie Buxton]

To go with my track saw, I built a giant speed square. It is almost 4 feet by 4 feet. I really wanted it to be accurate -- like less than 1/32 out over the 4 foot cross cut. So I built it from plywood edged with solid lumber. The solid lumber gave me the ability to adjust the 90 degree angle by shaving with a hand plane.

I tested and adjusted the speed square by first using the track saw to rip one edge of a sheet of plywood. Then I cross cut it in the middle, and folded the two pieces together like leaves in a book. If the 90 degree angle is perfect, the leaves fit together perfectly. If they don't fit, the difference is twice the error in the square. So I could see pretty easily how much to shave off the square to adjust it. It took two adjustment tries, but now this big square is probably the most accurate 90 square I have in the shop.

[Marty Tippin]

To go with my track saw, I built a giant speed square. It is almost 4 feet by 4 feet. I really wanted it to be accurate -- like less than 1/32 out over the 4 foot cross cut. So I built it from plywood edged with solid lumber. The solid lumber gave me the ability to adjust the 90 degree angle by shaving with a hand plane.

That gives me an idea - my cross-cut sled has a ~25" capacity and is dead-accurate for 90 degree cuts; maybe I can rip a piece of scrap MDF about 36" x 24" and cut a good square reference on the 24" edge. Glue and screw a straight piece of oak to the 2 ft edge as an alignment lip and I'd have a usable "square" about 3 ft long that I could just lay over the sheet to be broken down and align the track against it. I could cut the MDF at a diagonal to get rid of about half the weight too.

Hmmm... Maybe something to work on this evening - my track saw arrived today but the rail won't be here till tomorrow. It's like having a new sports car with no keys!

I don't need (or at least, my current skills can't benefit from) accuracy to 1/32" over 4 ft -- I'd be happy at this point with 1/16" in 4 ft... ;-)

[Hoang N Nguyen]

I use my woodpecker t square along with my festool track saw. It's 36" (I think) and I was able to rip all 4 sides of a table top down and have it dead square when pulling a tape at a diagonal.

[Greg R Bradley]

Using a T-Square or a large square is the easy way. That does not work with the Dewalt as it sacrificed that to give you the two edges. Same reason that you can't use the Angle Unit, parallel guides or anything that references off the back side or attaches to the slot that is clear of the saw path.

I would consider this defect to make the Dewalt completely unsuitable but users can partially work around this by drawing a line and carefully laying the track on the line. My first Festool had this same limitation but was improved when they came out with the second series of tracks about 20 years ago.

[Keith Hankins]

I use the festool track, and just plop the ply down on a 2" piece of solid insulation lay the track across it. Align with an old fashioned speed square and cut. never had an issue..

[Eric Schmid]

3-4-5 rule still works (http://workshop.lifehacker.com/use-the-3-4-5-rule-to-square-a-perfect-corner-1696690979). You would want a rule of some decent length that you trusted.

This is what I use. For the first 90 measure the diagonals and mark where each end of the track will be placed. Once I have two sides at 90, I usually just measure off the parallel edge for the last cut. Tedious, but gets the job done.

[Marty Tippin]

Using a T-Square or a large square is the easy way. That does not work with the Dewalt as it sacrificed that to give you the two edges. Same reason that you can't use the Angle Unit, parallel guides or anything that references off the back side or attaches to the slot that is clear of the saw path.

I would consider this defect to make the Dewalt completely unsuitable but users can partially work around this by drawing a line and carefully laying the track on the line. My first Festool had this same limitation but was improved when they came out with the second series of tracks about 20 years ago.

I understand the DeWalt track allows you to run the saw in either direction, but I don't see what there is about that which would preclude aligning the "back" edge of the track to some reference. Both edges of the track have the rubber tear-out guard, but both edges are (aren't they? My track isn't here yet..) cut perfectly parallel to the track by the saw the first time you run it down the track.

What am I missing?

[Greg R Bradley]

The anti-splinter is soft and any sideways force would change the position so you need to be careful to not push on it sideways. Its position is critical to anti-splinter and cutting on a line. The later Festool, Makita, and Mafell track is shown here:
328643
The solid track channel on the right is used to locate against a hard object like a square or attach Angle Unit or Parallel Guides. The Festool Angle Unit attaches to the channel as shown here:
328648
We modified an extra Angle Unit, locked into 90* and extended in the way that a person might make a crosscut sled to improve on a mitre gauge on a table saw.

[Mark W Pugh]

Does Dewalt have a miter attachment like EurekaZone does? http://www.eurekazone.com/product_p/ezs100.htm

I use one and it works great.

[Martin Wasner]

I recently had to build a 54"x102" dining room table from 8/4 quarter sawn white oak. I'm not a big fan of cutting solid in the Striebig because I don't have a blade for doing so. Especially on material that thick. An expensive hollow tooth blade will do it, but.... Man handling a 230 pound table top through a table saw wasn't all that exciting to think about either.

Ended up using the track saw. Laid out and marked the first edge and cut it. We ripped and squared a sheet of plywood on the panel saw so we had 90º edge to use as a guide for the track to cut the ends. The last edge we just pulled numbers to make it parallel to the other long edge.

Humping around a full sheet of plywood is probably not a good solution to what you're looking for, but it worked slick for me in this scenario. If I had to make cuts like that on the regular I'd probably have someone fab me a giant speed square out of aluminum. Maybe 3' plus on each end. I don't trust T squares for much more than sheet rock work.

[Eric Schmid]

Yes, there is both a fixed and adjustable miter gage. Fixed is 90 degrees, adjustable has a range of angles. Neither are very accurate in my experience. The fixed I have is not fixed at 90, which makes it worthless unless I want to try and shim the registration fence. The adjustable works well for repeat cuts once you find the correct angle, which is close to the factory scale but not quite. The miter gauge is easier to align on shorter cuts than long cuts. It's finicky registering a 12" fence to 4+ feet of rail which has a grip strip on the bottom, especially when the fence only registers on the left side. At least one point has to be marked anyway so I just use the measurements and lay the rail down on the line on longer cuts.

[Jamie Buxton]

Just as a FYI... If you want the cross-cut to be accurate to, say, 1/32" in the four-foot cut, the ninety degree angle has to be accurate to .04 degrees. Yes, .04 degrees. That's why I think a short square just isn't going to be accurate enough.

[Michael Zerance]

I use a 24" framing square. It works fine and gets me as close as I would ever need to be. Definitely within 1/32".

[Jon Endres]

I built all my cabinets in my house with an EZ-Guide track and Hitachi circular saw. In order to get the 90 degree angles I needed, I bought a good quality adjustable aluminum drywall square and set it precisely to 90 degrees (lot of places you can find the methods for doing this). I also had a vintage Stanley framing square that I set dead-nuts to 90 degrees. The nice thing about the EZ-Guide is that you set it right on your cut line, so I drew my lines using the drywall square and set the track on the line. If the cut was off, it was my fault for not tightening the clamps enough, or some similar user error. I still use the same setup now, ten years later, for cutting sheet goods and straightlining rough lumber.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

There is the dewalt DWS5027, but I do not see it in stock anywhere, and it did not review well. It seemed to rate between "yeah baby" and "not totally square"

http://www.dewalt.com/tools/saws-track-saw-attachments-dws5027.aspx

http://www.dewalt.com/us/tracksaw/downloads/DWTRACKSAWBR_(2).pdf

I usually just mark the spot on each end or use my own square (or more likely both).

[Jim Dwight]

Using your biggest known accurate square and extending the line will get you within 1/16, probably within 1/32. I've done it but am happy to have my workbench with Paulk crosscut jig. My current favorite "square" for use in the shop is a 12 inch speed square I got from Amazon for less than $10. It seems totally accurate and it's bright pink so it is easy to find. I had to make the but I also have parallel guides. I prefer my track positioning jigs but they work the same as the Festool except the index off the bottom of the ridge in the track that guides the saw. They work fine but don't allow clamping (the Festool doesn't allow clamping either).

One thing I really like about the DeWalt is the scale for depth on the saw is fractions of an inch and is the distance below the track that the blade will extend. Much handier for me than metric ignoring the track.

[Marty Tippin]

So I finally got the DeWalt track saw yesterday and spent the evening breaking down 4 sheets of plywood. I ended up not fretting too much about squaring the track - I tried several methods and it seems that a just using my 12" combination square is accurate enough. And maybe I got lucky, but the factory edges on the plywood were "square enough" for my purposes that several cuts were just a matter of setting the track parallel to the opposite edge and the piece came out fine. (In my world 1/16" in 4 ft is still "good enough" - one of these days my skills will improve and I'll have to do better, I'm sure...)

I did find that having rubber edges on both sides of the track was not really helpful for squaring it -- the rubber is fairly soft and, being black, it's hard to tell when you've got the track firmly up against the combination square. It's not hard to remove the rubber edge from one side, so I may end up doing that at some point.

[Cary Falk]

I did find that having rubber edges on both sides of the track was not really helpful for squaring it --.

Until you cut the rubber strip it is not parallel to anything and I wouldn't use it to align anything.

[Allan Speers]

Does Dewalt have a miter attachment like EurekaZone does? http://www.eurekazone.com/product_p/ezs100.htm

I use one and it works great.

I have two of these. One permanently JB-Welded to exactly 90 degrees & with a ~ 30" track dedicated to it.
I couldn't live without them. (Well, I could live without the second, adjustable one.)
There are other ways to do it, but this is SOOOOO fast.

It's similar to that Festool jig Greg showed, but better for several reasons, so if you are going to make something yourself, the differences are:

1: The EZ unit puts the saw much closer to the 90-degree arm, so you can use it on narrower pieces of stock.

2: The EZ unit has a really nice handle, (surprisingly worth the extra $60) which lets you easily apply downward pressure, holding the track firmly in place. This is most helpful, especially when cutting across a 2X4 or other narrow piece.

[Jim Dwight]

You don't put the track against a square. You use the square to mark the wood and then put the track on the mark. I guess you could put a Festool track against a square but I don't see why you would, it seems easier just to put the track on the mark and when you do that, the sticky bottom helps to keep everything in place.

With a MFT or equivalent you can also put dogs into the bench top to align the wood and track at right angles. They make special dogs to hold the track. I'm not overly confident of my hole layout since I could see the holes on the edge of the pegboard I used to make them were not lined up perfectly but they may be good enough for this to work. The MFT comes with a right angle setup which should work well - like the crosscut jig I made for my Paulk inspired workbench.

[Allan Speers]

You don't put the track against a square. You use the square to mark the wood and then put the track on the mark. I guess you could put a Festool track against a square but I don't see why you would, it seems easier just to put the track on the mark and when you do that, the sticky bottom helps to keep everything in place.


Huh? Greg's picture clearly shows a miter dingus BOLTED to a Festool track.


Anyway, once you've done it with the "attached track" way, using a t-square and then aligning your track to that mark will seem like the stone age. Trust me on this one. - And I'm not even talking about for a production shop. I'm just a hobbyist and I still would NEVER go back to the old way.