Treat for Festool Fans

[Steve Mathews]

Interesting review type video on a Festool saw. Caution fans, you're not gonna like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oezp-_DcUgg

[Rich Engelhardt]

Pfffffft...
So the guy has a beef with the price of Festool & comes across as some kind of "consumer champion" by pointing out how much plastic is in the saw.
Big deal.
I wonder just how much he actually used the saw before he tore it apart?
Come to think of it, I wonder what he did with the saw when he was done?
Does he say? I quit watching the video after a couple/three minutes.

[marty fretheim]

He probably put it back together and sent it back in the thirty day trial. Watch out for that saw on the reconditioned tool sale.

[Mike Cutler]

I watched it through to completion. He brings up some good points, and potential failure mechanisms, but nothing earth shattering. It's kinda nice to see one taken apart, but he did at one point break it, because he did not know how to take it apart, or have the correct tools to do it.
He has problems with the drive support bushings and bearings, drones on and on about that. He doesn't like the installation of the brushes, and the motor cover material.
Essentially he must believe that all carpenters and woodworkers just throw their tools down when they're done. This facet is repeated often about how the plastic, and bearings wouldn't survive a carpenter, or tradesperson, throwing the tool on the ground. Not sure if you guys/gals that do this work are in the habit of just tossing your tools down during work, but I highly suspect not.
The testing of the melting points of the various plastics was a lot of nonsense. Apparently he believes that the saw will melt, if used continuously, by a carpenter????
He really should have known the price of the tool though. It's not a thousand dollar saw. He harps on that incessantly.

He is also self admittedly not a wood worker, or carpenter, and has a fair amount of disdain for anyone that is.
You see these videos all over the internet, for any type of machine or device. I wouldn't take it too seriously. The second video of the saw is actually more informative, but you need a pretty good electronics foundation to understand some of the points.

[Darcy Warner]

He is Canadian, saw is close to that with rail in canuckia.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Apparently he believes that the saw will melt, if used continuously, by a carpenter????By coincidence, he may just have stumbled onto something there. Remember Per Swenson? He told me to be very careful about running my TS 55EQ without a dust collector of some kind hooked up to it. The air flow from the DC is what cools the saw.

[Steve Mathews]

...I wouldn't take it too seriously...

I think that is exactly what AvE is poking at. I think many a woodworker has taken the perceived quality of some tools too seriously, some worthy of it some not.

[Cary Falk]

This video has made the rounds here about once a year since it was created. I'm sure this thread will end the same. I don't care either way. What would me more helpful is if he tore the Bosch and DeWalt apart and compared. I agree that all track saws are expensive when compared to a $200 worm drive skillsaw that is made to survive a ladder fall, but a skillsaw is HEAVY. It comes down to love or hate for Festool and a persons mind is more than likely made up before watching the video. The company charges what the market will bear or they would go out of business.

[Mike Cutler]

I think that is exactly what AvE is poking at. I think many a woodworker has taken the perceived quality of some tools too seriously, some worthy of it some not.

I agree.
I do own the Festool, TS75. At the time I bought mine, I had a very specific use for it, and still do. Other options at time weren't going to be significantly less unless I went the Craigslist route. The market has changed with regards to track saws in the past 3-4 years, and now there are a lot of quality alternatives.
At the end of the day a tool either works for you, or it does not. It doesn't matter how much it cost, or who makes it.

I would like to see the price of the rails come down, for all track saws. No way those aluminum extrusions are that expensive to make.

[Jim Becker]

IMHO, it's a mistake to assume anything about quality and longevity using materials as the base-line. How a material is used within a design matters, too, and "non-metallic" materials can have excellent properties that don't limit longevity when things are done well.

[fred woltersdorf]

I've tried to watch this posters videos and I can't get past 60 sec, imho he could find fault with a 3" pure gold ball bearing.

[Rod Sheridan]

Whether you're a fan or not, that video is a waste of time.

There's nothing of value in it that I found, just a lot of personal bias and lack of knowledge regarding engineering and material science.

I have no doubt that the saw will do exactly what the Festool engineering staff designed it to do, with reliability and accuracy.

I own a Festool vacuum, cordless drill, and ROS.

They work exactly as advertised and for the first time in a decade my hand doesn't go numb sanding, the dust collection is great, the vacuum holds all the bits and pieces much better than any vacuum I've owned, it's as quiet as my Nilfisk and a pleasure to use.

The cordless drill packs up perfectly, is compact and works well....No complaints with it.

I have no idea about other Festool stuff as I only bought what I would use and like from their product line.

I have a friend with the tracksaw, he says it's accurate and has good dust collection, which is extremely important to him when working in a bank or a lawyers office suite. I wouldn't buy one as I have no use for it.

The video would be a lot better if he had some MTBF calculations or statistics to support his viewpoint.....Rod.

[Steve Mathews]

I've tried to watch this posters videos and I can't get past 60 sec, imho he could find fault with a 3" pure gold ball bearing.

I thought that might be the case too until viewing the following video. He liked the KitchenAid mixer. I'm beginning to think my wife's sense of value is better than mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qKp-0h9P18

[Cary Falk]

I thought that might be the case too until viewing the following video. He liked the KitchenAid mixer. I'm beginning to think my wife's sense of value is better than mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qKp-0h9P18



Is that a coordless Dewalt Tracksaw he opened the box with? HaHa. I wish I had that kind of money to tear apart expensive equipment.

[Cary Falk]

I've tried to watch this posters videos and I can't get past 60 sec, imho he could find fault with a 3" pure gold ball bearing.

Everybody knows gold is too soft a metal to hold up in that application. You need diamonds. :D

[Josh Kocher]

He doesn't take himself too seriously. It's funny. and interesting.. "Filtering his dust collection through a cigarette"...

Look forward to the third video that "guys whose wives must have Festool tramp stamps" should avoid.

disclaimer: I own 3 or 4 Festool tools, my tracksaw is Mafell though... I wouldn't buy that inferior Festool model.

[Martin Wasner]

disclaimer: I own 3 or 4 Festool tools, my tracksaw is Mafell though... I wouldn't buy that inferior Festool model.

Ha! I'm in the same boat.

I'd like to see someone rip a Mafell apart and see what the prognosis is.

[brent stanley]

I find the reaction to this video really interesting but peculiar, though in fairness there are some strange reactions IN the video as well!

I've watched a bunch of his videos and sometimes he's impressed with the very high end tools (he's torn down the likes of Fein, Hilti and Snap-On for example) and sometimes he's not....similarly for the low end tools. So looked at on the whole, he has no particular inclination towards one or the other as supported by observation. What I think has happened is the big Festool loyalists see his pointing out a few things he doesn't like as an attack on their expensive purchases they have to justify. But do yourself a favour and sit down with a pen and paper and tally up all the things he liked about the saw and was very impressed with. He liked the box, liked the cord material, was very impressed with the bearings used, very impressed with the feel of all the controls, impressed with how smooth all the mechanisms were, impressed with the quality of the materials on the body, the quality of the injection moulding, I would say blown away by the machining of the gear assembly, very impressed with the quality of the base, impressed with the guide rail adjusters, "beefyness" of many of the electrical components etc etc etc....I have probably missed some things.

He thought the cord style was over-engineered and may be indicative of his lack of familiarity with the system. Maybe not, we don't know if he's used a similar system before and could have an opinion based on experience....which he's entitled to have without being an idiot. Being an idiot is not a prerequisite for having an opinion different than you! I don't really get the system either, but I don't have any festool in my shop other than a cordless drill so I am ill-equipped to offer an opinion and am inclined to give it a try before I do so.

A lot of people have gone on at great length about the oilite bearing vs. roller bearing issue and are calling him an idiot for questioning the use. Putting aside for a moment the fact that he wasn't actually as negative about it as people assert, I find it very interesting that he is supposedly an idiot who doesn't know anything because he would say he's really surprised to see it, but the same people who boast about the infallible might of the Festool engineering department have failed to make the link that Festool themselves actually used roller bearings for years in this very saw! So if this guy AvE is an idiot because he's surprised to see an oilite bearing there, what does it say about the engineering department that (no doubt) through great deliberations and testing chose to use one themselves for years? There was a long period of time when this very high end saw used that type of bearing and only recently changed, but yet he's an idiot for being surprised? Come on... FYI, the Mafell that many see as higher end uses a ball bearing there......guess those Mafell Engineers are all a bunch of idiots.

And the wire pinch? I of course don't know for sure, but I'm inclined to think that this is a rare occurrence given the attention to detail otherwise demonstrated, BUT when I buy a high end tool, I am paying for that type of thing NOT to happen! His criticism is fair.

He admitted that he failed to notice there was an obstruction hitting the brushes as he was taking it apart. It would have been easy for him to edit out that goof, but he chose not to. Is that demonstrative of a someone with an axe grinding agenda? Rhetorical question.

What's strange is how he pointed out so many great things about the saw - way more positive than negative - and yet in the end gave it the thumbs down. Maybe he expected more which is his right, but it did seem kind of weird.

[Jacob Mac]

What’s strange to me is that everyone is evaluating this video in a vacuum. Does the saw work well, and does it suffer from lots of mechanical issues? We have tons of empirical data to judge the saw by. Why would anyone care what a video says as opposed to real world results?

[Josh Kocher]

What's strange to me is how serious some people take it - whether Hater or Fanboy.

It's YouTube...

It's entertainment...

It's one man's opinion... which he took considerable effort to derive and I thought was mostly balanced

Live your life and buy and saw up your wood with whatever floats your boat and be satisfied that it is your boat you're floating!

[brent stanley]

What’s strange to me is that everyone is evaluating this video in a vacuum. Does the saw work well, and does it suffer from lots of mechanical issues? We have tons of empirical data to judge the saw by. Why would anyone care what a video says as opposed to real world results?

Well I dunno for sure, but my guess is they have a knee jerk reaction to defend their expensive purchases, and are acting in much the same way as they criticize him for!

[Ed Labadie]

Doesn't matter if its a Festool, Hilti, DeWalt, etc....As long as my tools do what is expected of them with no failures, I'm happy.

Don't care what anyone else thinks of them.

Ed

[Steve Mathews]

Doesn't matter if its a Festool, Hilti, DeWalt, etc....As long as my tools do what is expected of them with no failures, I'm happy.

Don't care what anyone else thinks of them.

Ed
Yes, but it's good to know this stuff before plunking down hard earned money for it.

[Peter Kelly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsbb7gyFFf0

[brent stanley]

It's interesting how over at FOG, Festool made them take the video down.

[Ben Rivel]

It's interesting how over at FOG, Festool made them take the video down.
Ha, yea it pops up from time to time on various woodworking forums. It gets a lot of posts until the fighting gets out of hand then the mods usually close the thread. Its an old video now and definitely been made the rounds. The only thing that ever does come from it being reposted it more watchers/views for Ave.

[Robert Hazelwood]

I like AvE's videos and he seems to me like an honest guy, not really a fanboy or a hater outside of making jokes about every brand. But he is basically a gearhead and evaluates machines mostly on how bomb-proof ("skookum") the mechanicals and electronics are. The Festool track saw is ok on this, but not especially impressive for the price. But the details like dust collection, accuracy and cleanliness of cut are what people pay Festool prices for, and these matter if you are doing a certain type of work. So even if, say, a worm-drive skilsaw has beefier internals and can withstand more abuse and costs less money, that doesn't make it superior for a finish carpenter or cabinetmaker. He just has the wrong criteria for judging this sort of tool, because he has no real interest in the type of work it's designed for. That's why his performance test is cross cutting a 2x12 instead of making an exacting cut on an expensive piece of ply and seeing how straight/square and well-finished it is.

All the same it is interesting to see the insides of such an expensive tool, and I enjoy the video for what it is.