Makita tracksaw

Sounds like you’re making progress!

I’ve got the same one you just got, it’s a nice saw.  I ended up with 2 55” tracks, and yes the extra 4” would have been nice.  I ended up also getting one of the 39” rails for more convenient shorter cuts.  The makita rail joined does work fine, but it can take a little fiddling and a good straight edge to be sure you;ve got the two rails perfectly lined up.  If you do that a lot you might want to get the TSO rail joiners - they come as a pair and they’re made with a profile that ends up automatically getting perfect alignment every time.

My saw came in the box with the insert.  If you want to go all out with a bunch of the makita boxes I think they stack nicely and latch together sort of like the festool systainers.  But otherwise, it’s just a box.  I think with a small amount of 1/2” or 3/4” ply you could get a little tracksaw practice making a slightly smaller box that would do just as well if not better to hold the saw.

If you haven’t already found it, Peter Millard’s youtube channel has a number of tracksaw tips including some pretty easy and nice accessories like a rail square and parallel guides.

Makita

  I don't think you can go wrong with Makita.  I have two of their power planes and one of their drills that are over  40 years old and still running strong....DaveB 

I'm a Dummy

So . . . curious . . . what is a track saw?  Is it like the old Radial Arm Saws?  Those were awesome, and very hard to find now.

Right  now I'm picturing a great, big-a$$ Makita saw cutting my HO Scale track.  OMG!

What is a tracksaw?

It’s a circular saw that runs on a track.

Re: What is a track saw?

Sometimes called plunge saws or rail saws. With a suitably large work table, which I plan to build, they are an alternative to table saws for a lot of things, especially cutting down 4' x 8' sheet goods. They are more portable than table saws and can be 'put away' (with the rails hung on the wall).

It's more difficult to cut your fingers off with a track saw than a table saw. I have table-saw-phobia, but wanted to do spline construction, so I got a track saw. 

With just a saw and track, they are more fiddly to set up a cut than a table saw, and don't naturally do repeated cuts the way a table saw and fence will. But I will build jigs into my cutting table that remediate that. The jigs won't be adjustable like a table saw fence, but my repeatable cuts will all be making spline, so I only need one width.

I know about the TSO rail joiners, and had them on my shopping list. Then being in Mexico reared its ugly head again. I think TSO does ship them to Mexico, but it costs like $50 for the joiners and $50 for shipping & handling. So I decided to wait and try the joiners the tracks came with. I expect when I'm in spline-making-mode I'll keep the tracks joined for quite some time. At least that's my hope, so I won't have to fiddle with the joiners much. If it gets to be a problem, I'll be ordering the TSO joiners (and the rail square from them too).

One shopping option I had considered was to stop at a specialty tool store along my recent road trip from Virginia to Texas and pick up the parts I needed. That would have been my method of acquiring the festool saw if I'd gone with that, but things were out of stock, and I'd have had to make a couple stops, and in the end I just decided to save the money and trouble and buy the makita. It's adjustments are less precise than the festool, but I don't expect to be bothered too much by that since I'm not making cabinets or counter tops.

Track saw

... just trying to imagine a saw that is so big it has to be mounted on a rail car and run on railroad track ...

Importing stuff

Eastwind:

I feel for you. Here in Canada, we find that we have to import a lot of things that we need, as they are not always available in Canada, or if they are between shipping costs, currency differences and additional steps by organizations each adding their profit that things can be so much more expensive. Fortunately we are reasonably close to the border and can arrange for our own importation to save some of the costs. Like you we often find that items available to us locally are stripped of some extras (supposably to keep costs down) causing us to have to purchase them separately, or import directly from the US.

Oh THAT kind of track saw...

All the way through the first paragraph of the original post I was thinking, "oh wow, is this some sort of diamond studded high-tensile carbon fiber thread in a tension bow for making precise, fine cuts along a diagonal to ensure staggered rail gaps?

Oh. 

I've gotta second EW's emphasis on greater safety with a track saw. We use them with middle school kids with a lot less anxiety than other options.

mucho dinero

Now that I've got the saw and the track, I need a shop vac, a 12' hose extension for the shop vac, fittings, and maybe a cyclone dust extractor chamber. Plus clamps for the track and a table to use it on (which will be my first project to build using the saw). And a TSO rail square, and maybe TSO rail joiners if the makita ones are too difficult to get consistently straight. Sigh.

Up till now really the only power tool I had was an electric drill, so there's a steep buying curve, if that's what you'd call it.

I hope we have some good sales this holiday season!

a slight difficulty

I finally took the plunge tonight and broke in the track saw. The track has a rubber splinter-guard strip that is made over-wide and then the first thing you do is use your saw in the track to trim it to an exact fit. In the videos they show the rubber strip coming off in a long noodle. Mine didn't work that way. The track saw turned the excess into rubber dust. Since I hadn't anticipated that, I hadn't hooked up the shop vac. I was doing the run on two saw horses end to end with a couple eight foot one by fours on top to smooth the gap so it was a half-baked setup in the first place, and trying to add in a shop vac hose would have made it more rickety. 

After I get the table built for supporting the track saw things will be less rickety, but I needed to do this first trim of the splinter guard before anything else.

So I have a good idea of how far the saw, unmitigated by a shop vac, will throw sawdust. Pretty much all over the room - about 4-6 feet sideways and in front and in back. I don't know how far in front and back because the stuff hit the walls :-P. 

It didn't, at least, throw any rubber dust up into the air above the level of the track. 

Last Monday I visited the lumberyard. It's far from the only one, but when my remodel contractor wanted me to pick out some plywood for a finished wall he took me there, so it is sort of recommended. 

They have lots of different piles of plywood and MDF of different qualities. I got two sheets of 15 mm plain 'natural brown' mdf for $25 a sheet. It fits inside my van real nicely, completely flat between the wheel wells.

They didn't have anything in the way of finished dimensional lumber. I realized part way through the deal that what they do is finish it there how you want it. They had a bunch of big table saws and planers and guys working them. I elected to just buy the unfinished 1x4s without ordering the extra work, since no prices were posted and I had no idea what anything cost. They have rough cut 2x4s, 1x4s, 1x8's I think and maybe some bigger sizes.

The rough cut 1x4s are actually 1" (full) by 4.5" x 99 inches. So they would finish down to regular 1x4's, if I'd paid for that. The guy helping me gave me the first quality without asking (guess I looked rich), which was fine, they were 90 pesos each, about $4.50. That's pretty expensive, but it's pretty good stuff, straight grain but not quarter-sawn, all straight so far, no cupping, twisting or bowing, no knots at all. I brought home 8 which should be more than enough for my table.

Except I wanted to get 2x2s for the legs and they didn't have any. I realized afterwards what I was supposed to do if I wanted 2x2s was pay them to take a rough-cut 2x4 and turn it into a pair of finished 2x2s. So I will have to go back for that when I get the rest done, the legs are the last step. One 2x4 will give me 4 legs 2x2x4', which I might cut down a little, it's nice to work belly-height.

Got it all home, got the 1x4s up the elevator no problem, then got the security guard to give me a hand with the MDF. Disaster. Doesn't fit in the elevator. At least he couldn't make it fit, and I couldn't communicate the best way to try. The guy wasn't super sharp. 

I did some belated measuring. The elevator door, measured diagonally, is 7' 4". But inside the elevator cage the ceiling is higher, and around 5' deep, so it might be possible to go in at an angle, then up to get the bottom corner through the door. So I need to try again, but I haven't. I wanted to get my track saw in business because if I can't get the sheets in the elevator I'm going to have to cut them down in the parking lot with the track saw.

Having to cut them in half isn't a total disaster, it will mean my cutting table has a seam in the middle on which things can catch, but that's all. I'd make 2 4x4 pieces, not 2 2x8 pieces.

The guard actually suggested the other alternative, when I indicated I didn't want to cut it - which is to hoist the sheets up outside the building with ropes. That will cost me a lot in tips. It might also be possible to get someone or a pair of someones to hump the sheets up the 8 flights of stairs, but I think that would result in a bunch of damage, it's going to be cleaner to just slice them in half.

The whole thing has implications for how am I going to get my spline material "uploaded" to my apartment. I didn't actually see masonite at this place. I wonder if a sheet of masonite is flexible enough to bend enough to fit through the door. 

Or I can just lop a foot off the end of each sheet downstairs and have 7' splines instead of 8' splines. 

But it's not clear where downstairs I'm going to be able to do this cutting. Most of the parking lot is bumpy brick and constantly getting wet (because the guy who washes cars just lets the water go wherever). I can't block traffic, but I could maybe do the cutting half in and half out of van if I can figure a way to support the half sticking out. My two sawhorses have metal adjustable legs, but the adjustments are finite and 6" apart so I don't know if I can match the van's bed height.

I've got some figuring-out to do here. I'm sure I'll get a lot of suggestions, but it's hard without seeing the problem (i.e. the parking lot).

Obviously for the future, I can have the cutting done at the lumber yard, too. That will probably be easier than bringing the sawhorses down, setting them up, and cutting half out the back of the van. They probably charge about 25 cents a cut - at least that's what home depot charges. This place might be cheaper than that.

I still need a source for masonite, although this place might be persuaded to order me a pile of sheets if I order my entire empire's need all at once. How many sheets of masonite come on a pallet?