Putting a dust bag on a tracksaw?

[Wade Lippman]

I made some bookcases for a friend. He has put in crown molding, and they no long fit. He wants me to cut them down so they fit under the molding.

Easy to do. I will just clamp a track to the legs, positioned by a spacer, and cut. But there will be some saw dust. I hate to drag a vacuum over for such a small thing (plus, I would need two circuits), but I also hate to throw sawdust around his garage. I have a bag off a Rigid sander that fits the saw. It is very coarse and probably doesn't do much for sanding dust, but should be fine for sawdust. I tried it, without cutting anything, and it inflates the bag; so I figure some sawdust will go into the bag, and the rest will fall straight down where it will be easy to clean up.

Does this make sense, or am I over looking something? Thanks
347209

[Jim Dwight]

I think it would help to minimize the cleanup and in that sense work. But you shouldn't need two circuits to run the saw and vacuum if there is a 20A available. I run my saw and vacuum all the time on 1.

[Jim Becker]

The bag will likely catch some of the sawdust flung by the blade back through the guard, but you'll still probably have a bunch that escapes without the vacuum attached to, um...guide...the dust and chips to their oblivion. ;) Circular saw blades are like that, even when well encased like the Festool.

[Van Huskey]

Considering Festool makes a dust bag for their tracksaws I think it should work "OK", but I know you don't expect vac level dust collection.

As an aside the Festool bag requires an extra part to use the Festool version on the corded saws, it doesn't fit correctly without is.

[Wade Lippman]

Considering Festool makes a dust bag for their tracksaws I think it should work "OK", but I know you don't expect vac level dust collection.

As an aside the Festool bag requires an extra part to use the Festool version on the corded saws, it doesn't fit correctly without is.

$40 for the bag and $14 for the extra part! Whew.

[Van Huskey]

$40 for the bag and $14 for the extra part! Whew.

While I can't disagree it is actually the best engineered dust collection bag I have seen which I know may sound silly, add to that most companies wouldn't have bothered to make the part to insure backwards compatibility given what I expect is a very small demand for the corded saws.

[Greg R Bradley]

It will work far better than nothing but a vac will do better. The bag will get closer to the vac if you are doing an enclosed cut like cutting plywood against supporting foam. In other words, once the back side of the cut is open the vacuum will make a bigger difference. They really did an amazing job of designing the blade cavity to move the sawdust out the exhaust port.

[Wade Lippman]

In case anyone's interested...
Made the cuts and found no sawdust on the floor; while the bag has a good amount in it. It was dramatically better than I expected.

I am sure there was sawdust on the floor, but I didn't see any. The floor was kinda dirty to start with.