Member
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.
Guest
Ha! I'm in the same boat.Originally Posted by Josh Kocher
I'd like to see someone rip a Mafell apart and see what the prognosis is.
Last edited by Martin Wasner; 01-21-2018 at 7:39 PM.
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.
Contributor
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?
Member
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!
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!
Last edited by brent stanley; 01-21-2018 at 7:59 PM.
Member
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
[OP]
Contributor
Yes, but it's good to know this stuff before plunking down hard earned money for it.
Member
It's interesting how over at FOG, Festool made them take the video down.
Member
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.
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success!
Contributor
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.
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