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$135.11 Track Saw

4K views 21 replies 10 participants last post by  dwwright 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
#5 · (Edited by Moderator)
Any feedback on dust collection? I just read through the Amazon comments and I m tempted to get one for cutting glued panels, the only reason to stay from my circular saw with straightedge is dust collection though

- GrantA
I'd say it would probably be ok. I use a 1 hp collector on my Makita track saw and have very little dust.

Youtube Reviews on the saw



 
#7 · (Edited by Moderator)
Any feedback on dust collection? I just read through the Amazon comments and I m tempted to get one for cutting glued panels, the only reason to stay from my circular saw with straightedge is dust collection though

- GrantA

I d say it would probably be ok. I use a 1 hp collector on my Makita track saw and have very little dust.

Youtube Reviews on the saw





- bruc101
An excellent way of shopping for a product, but one must continue their research. Yet, you are the one that got us here.
Best to all-
 
#10 · (Edited by Moderator)
33 5-star
29 4-star
5 3-star
14 2-star
19 1-star reviews

That is not impressive. It is 3.5 stars, not 4.5. Read a few of the 1-star reviews, again, not impressive.

- BroncoBrian
I going to order two of the saws. One to be a free give away on my new upgraded plans site I'm building, and the second one for a woodworker I know that can't afford a track saw. I bet he'll love it. And. my machine shows it to have a 4,5 star rating, but I didn't do the math on it like you seem to have done.
 
#11 ·
Reading through the reviews most bad ones are because of the track, mostly trying to connect two short sections to make a long one. That's a simple fix though just order a longer track. I only saw two that were complaining about the saw - one said the base plate was bent, surely the saw was replaced and the other said the motor shorted out from the same guy who couldn't get the track together straight so I'm guessing he got it in a bind
If any of you try it with dust collection post back here with thoughts please. I've got a cool worm drive waiting on some rehab now so I'll hold off on bringing in another saw.
 
#12 ·
This came up in the deals thread a few weeks back. The wen is a clone of the grizzly and sheppach ones.

Jonah did a review on his sheppach. http://lumberjocks.com/reviews/product/3523

I picked one up, but haven't used it yet. I'm waiting on the extra tracks to come down in price so i can pick up another 55" one.

It's definitely not going to be a festool, but at 1/4 of the price I'd say it's a decent alternative for the hobbist.
 
#13 ·
I going to order two of the saws. One to be a free give away on my new upgraded plans site I m building, and the second one for a woodworker I know that can t afford a track saw. I bet he ll love it. And. my machine shows it to have a 4,5 star rating, but I didn t do the math on it like you seem to have done.

- bruc101
How do you enter for a free one Bruce ? :<))))))
 
#14 ·
This came up in the deals thread a few weeks back. The wen is a clone of the grizzly and sheppach ones.

Jonah did a review on his sheppach. http://lumberjocks.com/reviews/product/3523

I picked one up, but haven t used it yet. I m waiting on the extra tracks to come down in price so i can pick up another 55" one.

It s definitely not going to be a festool, but at 1/4 of the price I d say it s a decent alternative for the hobbist.

- Steve
They look identical except for the colors and name. I wonder how hard it would be to make a one piece long track from some aluminum or thin hard board.
 
#15 ·
I going to order two of the saws. One to be a free give away on my new upgraded plans site I m building, and the second one for a woodworker I know that can t afford a track saw. I bet he ll love it. And. my machine shows it to have a 4,5 star rating, but I didn t do the math on it like you seem to have done.

- bruc101

How do you enter for a free one Bruce ? :<))))))

- GR8HUNTER
I'm going to give away several things including one of those saws. In our warehouse, we always have what we call shorts that could be anywhere from 12 inches long to 3 feet long that we really can't use in the millwork shop because of the lengths.

I noticed we had a good bit of Cherry, Maple, Curley Maple, Walnut, Sapele, Riff sawn Oak and Popular in there. I told my daughters what I wanted to do with it and they said they would tag it and put in on a pallet for me.

Haven't decided how to give any of it away just yet. Most likely, I'll put up a set of plans to be built by woodworkers for some of the items. I also have woodworkers all over the world that use my free plans and I want them in on it also. Maybe have something special just for them that I can purchase in their country.

The site has been a lot of fun for me hearing and talking to woodworkers. The site there now is actually getting old, time consuming to update and needs a complete overhaul. I started building a new site months ago and haven't had the time to get back to it. It's probably 60% completed and will have a lot more plans on it, especially for beginners. The Beginner plans are the ones downloaded the most and asked for.

The website will change when I upload the new site and have it's own domain name. I'll also make the change on my signature here on LJ and to my mailing list. When I open the new site all the give away details will be on the home page.

Thanks for asking.
 
#20 ·
Bruc- how do we/I find this new site?

- Desert_Woodworker
I've not completed building the new site and hope to have it done within the next 4 to 6 weeks. It's a much more robust site than the one now and will have a lot more plans on it. The site will be much simpler and faster to do updates on it for me and will be more user friendlier.

The new site sits on one of my wife's dedicated servers in a data center in Florida until I finish it. I have the site closed so it's not viewable to the public yet.

Most of the plans are measured pieces I've found over the years that I drafted into plans with Autrocad Architectural Desktop, not something that just popped into my mind and call it a piece of furniture. It can also be very time consuming to draft and dimension a set of plans and make into a downloadable pdf file. When I draft a set of plans where I think people can understand them, I'm actually building that piece of furniture in my mind as if I was doing it in my shop. Fun but time consuming.

Just on the one kitchen base cabinet I have on the site, I've had woodworkers tell me they could take those drawings and build all of their base cabinets for a new kitchen and had never built a kitchen before. The tell me they based that on the joinery, top to bottom, front to back dimensions, especially height of the face frame to the top of the toe kick and how to build build a support frame in the bottom of the cabinet. More kitchen cabinets and an island will be put on the site when I've completed drafting them.

If anyone likes my plans and has a suggestion for a set, all you have to do is let me know and I'll see if I can eventually draft a set of plans for it.
 
#21 ·
I have several Wen tools and am happy with them. Some are 30 years old, so I can't comment on the quality of a 2018 tool compared to one that is 30+ years old; I can only assume. The ones I own, have seen very light use, so they are definitely not to be compared to Dewalt or Festool. If I was in the market for a track saw, I would definitely buy the Wen. My current track saw is a piece of plywood, 8' long x 6" wide with an 8' long x 1/2" thick strip to guide the edge of my "Skil" saw. Cheap, but very effective.
 
#22 · (Edited by Moderator)
I picked up one of these a week or so back, been a nice saw to use and will be especially handy breaking down plywood. My current method involves clamps, a straight 2×4, and offsetting the "fence" from the blade by about 1 9/16", so will be 10 times faster with this.

I have no comparison to the grizzly and other clones of this saw, but I did notice the glides on the track have been located further apart, at least on the back side, it doesn't show any wobble that other videos show.

The bearings in the motor do make the chatter of cheap bearings, but having said this, I own saws that are 20 years old that chattered when I got them and they all still work fine.

I was getting some tear-out on cross cuts in birch prefinished plywood, but I think a better blade and even pre-scoring the cuts with a light cut of the saw would take care of any issues.

For track storage and transport, triton has some track bags available for both sizes, got mine at the links below. Still looking for a good storage solution for the saw, clamps, and other accessories.

https://www.toolnut.com/triton-ttscb1500-canvas-bag-for-1500mm-track.html
https://www.toolnut.com/triton-ttscb700-canvas-bag-for-700mm-track.html
 
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