Originally Posted by
andy bessette
Pretty sure most of the track saw hate comes from those who've never owned one.
Andy
I don't think it's so much hate, as just folks explaining another way to do things, that yield the same results.
What makes a track saw attractive is that many people, just do not have the space for a large table saw, or a panel saw. If I can fit the panel on my table saw, I have a JessEm Mast-R-Slide on mine, I'll pick that all day, everyday, over my Festool rails and TS 75. I also have some of the earliest iterations of the EZ Smart rails, and to be brutally honest, they're much higher quality than the Festool rails, but they have a limitation, that the Festool rails do not. I also have shop made hardboard edge guides, and the work as well as anything else. They just take a little more prep.
Me personally, I think the Festool rails are a rip off. They're very poorly made, and machined, for something that cost that much. Two Festool rails should butt together perfectly, and that is not the case. I own four Festool rails, all of them have to be aligned with each other and they should not need to be. It's not that hard to machine perfect corners on aluminum extrusions.
When folks get locked into "one way", or "one system", it blinds them to other possibilities, thus limiting them, that may one day be their way out of a corner.
Tom has some very valid points. It's the tool, the hand, and creative mind, that are more important than "the system", or method.
Last edited by Mike Cutler; 01-05-2024 at 7:09 PM.
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