How to Make a DIY Track Saw - Can it Beat a 40v Makita?

so you can make this DIY plunge saw for almost no money at all and today I'm going to show you how and once we've built it we're going to put it up against this 800B 40v volt Makita plunge saw we're going to put them head-to-head to find out if you should build one of these for yourself or if you should spend a ton of money on an expensive plunge saw kit so let's start by building our homemade plunge saw jig first thing you need is an 18 mm piece of plywood like this one the first thing we need to do is to cut this piece of ply down to the correct width to act as our guide rail so to do that flip your circular saw over and we take a measurement of the bottom plate of the circular saw so in my case that is 132 mm and then you'll want a couple of square Edge tile trims any finish will do I went for chrome doesn't really matter as long as it's a nice smooth surface we'll take a measurement of these and they are 19 mm it'll make more sense when I start to build this but we're going to be using two of these to create our track so we need to add 19 mm * 2 and that brings us in 170 mm so that's the overall width that our track needs to be now we've got one good Factory edge here we can use that but we need to cut 170 mm in from that good Edge now you could use a table saw you could use a circular saw now this cut doesn't need to be millimet perfect however we do want to try and get it a straight as possible so that is the base of our track and we can now cut let down to whatever length we want I would advise as a starting point if we take some inspiration from the Makita rails I've got two of the 1.5 M rails and that's probably a reasonably good place to start but if you want to cut full sheets of course it might be worth making it longer so now I'm just using my circular saw against the square to cut the length that I need so we've got a finished base plate size and now we're going to attach the tile trims to turn this into a guide rail I lay the trim onto the ply and I make a little Mark with a sh I'll be where I want to cut it a miter block and a hacka are the best two things to use to cut the trims although if a grinder is all you've got good with that cut yourself two lengths exactly the same now we're going to fix the tile trims to the base to give our saw something to run against we're going to use the holes already supplied in the tile trim if your tile trim doesn't already have holes in it you'll need to drill some yourself now you're going to want a self centering drill bit this is a trend one you can get lots of cheap ones but the trend ones are best I'll put a link Down Below in the description as I will with all the handy little tools for this job so we're going to pilot hole this first get your trim flush on the end and then use your self Center and drill bit just to make a small pilot hole and I'll use some very short screws to just screw that in place and now we know that end is flush we can pivot this and bend it in and out to make sure we get it flush all the way along this Edge and as I manipulate that tile trim in and out I can just repeat the process of pilot holing and screwing to fix it in place so we've got our first good Edge for our saw to run against but we need a second one now take the battery out your saw for the next bit and then I need to remove the blade from the saw take the bolt out the middle lift the guard out the way and just pop the blade out now pop the guard out the way and you'll be able to lay the saw hard up against the rail that we just positioned and from there we can now position our second piece of tile trim now the reason you do it this way versus just measuring it is because you want to get the right amount of tension so that the so can slide freely between the two tile trims if you push this too tight you're going to struggle to move the saw so just lay it so that it's touching the base plate of the saw and that gives you nice free movement and what you can now do is repeat what we did the other side and screw this tile trim in place we'll use the so as we go along to give ourselves the perfect tension your saw should slide freely if it doesn't you need to adjust it because that could cause Kickback and become dangerous now we need to add some stops in the ends of the rail otherwise the saw could just carry on going and just cut our rail in half take a measurement between the two tile trims which should be that first measurement of 132 mil and cut two end pieces from your tile trim at that measurement and we can use those to create the end stops for the saw so that the saw can't just continue running through the rail fix those in place like before now we're getting there but we still don't have a cutting edge so now we've got the basics of the rail how are we going to make a good precise Cutting Edge so we'll put the saw back in the blade now we won't we'll put the blade back in the saw and then we'll cut ourselves a nice straight Cutting Edge so we'll set the dep for the S blade to a few mil make sure you haven't got a battery in when you do this just so we can make a small cut Mark along this piece of Timber place that in the rail that we've made and we're going to plunge that Sword Down In by a couple of M now be very careful of this stage because when you plunge a circular saw down into a piece of Timber there's a risk of Kick Back a risk of that saw bouncing out and coming back towards you hold on to the saw nice and tightly and keep well out of the way of the blade we've got our initial plunge down into the timber now hold on tightly with both hands and just run that saw the length for the rail so you can see we now have a Mark that we can work with so now we need to make some holes for visibility so we can line up the mark that you make on the material that you're cutting with the cut line on the track saw and make a mark for the first hole just in front of the guide on the saw and then you can line everything up perfectly so we know where the first hole is going to go and then we'll space the rest of the marks out evenly I'm going to put a hole every 25 cm but you can have as many or as few as you feel necessary and now I'm going to use a 38 mm hole saw and now I'm going to use my hole saw to drill through the guide rail to create my visibility holes now we'll just give those holes a little sand down just to remove any rough edges so we've got our visibility holes and we can now finish the cut line now unlock the depth control and we're going to plunge the saw down into into the material now again when you do this be careful this is when Kickback could happen and we have plunged through the material the most dangerous bit is out of the way now and we can run the saw along that original line that we made so we've got our homemade plung saw track saw whatever you want to call it saw and now I think we should test it against my Makita 40 volt plunge saw which cost me nearly £800 and then we'll have a look at where it can keep up where its pros and cons are and if you should bother considering buying a plunge saw or just building one of these but before we do any of that if you're not subscribed already hit the Subscribe button cuz you don't want to miss out on more videos like these and hit the like button because that helps this video reach and help more people like you on YouTube now for me a tracka is the tool that I'd go to if I'm looking for a precise straight cut on something like this melamine board for example and when cutting something like this I'd be looking for no chipping or tear out on the surface of the board so I think the first test we're going to do is Rip down a small section of this shelf here to see if our DIY plunge saw can keep up with the Makita so I want to rip 30 mm off the edge of this shelf here now I'm not going to clamp any of this down I'm just going to lay my guide rail on the marks and the plunga rails got these rubber grippy strips on the bottom so that it doesn't slide around so we don't really need to clamp it now we Outdoors but I'll run the extractor anyway because that gives us a good comparison of the amount of dust that each machine kicks out and let's make a cut right now as you'd probably expect it's really really easy to make a straight cut like that with this saw and it goes through it like butter granted I do have a fairly new blade in here but nonetheless it's completely effortless you can see we've got the perfect cut there it's perfectly straight and there's no chipping on the surface at all and that's probably no surprise you probably wouldn't expect anything else than a perfect cut so now I think we'll test the DIY plunge saw and see what sort of results we get with that so I'll line the track up with the marks I just made and let's see if we can get a similar standard of cut to the one that the Makita gave us you can see how well the visibility holes work in assisting us to get that perfectly straight cut you can also see that we're getting a lot more dust even with the extractor running the only real negative I found with the DIY plunge saw rail is that it slips around on shiny surfaces so I got some of this grippy tape I put three strips on the bottom of the track and that really seems to help stop the track from sliding around on the shiny surface so it certainly kicks out a lot more dust than our tracks saw but let's have a look at what kind of quality of cut we've got on the edge of the board and how straight it is so for the most part this is really good we do have a couple of tiny bits of chipping on there but nothing too major and it's worth remembering some of that chipping could be down to the blade but what we do have you probably can't see that is a perfectly straight cut now of course this has its limitations it can't cut angles like this can it doesn't have the dust extraction that this has but what it does do is it delivers 70% of what this can do which is a perfectly straight cut without spending a huge amount of money on a fancy plunge saw kit so what I suggest you do is build one of these yourself try it out and if you love it and use it loads then you can go and buy one of these so I hope you've enjoyed the video and found it helpful if you have hit one of these cuz you're bound to like them as well and I'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: The DIY Guy

Views: 93,067

Keywords: diy, diy guy, the diy guy, homemade tools, diy track saw, make your own track saw, homemade track saw, home made track saw, diy plunge saw, home made plunge saw, homemade plungesaw, diy plunge saw guide rail, circular saw jig, circular saw guide, circular saw guide diy, circular saw guide rail, how to make straight cuts, how to cut straight with a circular saw, makita 40v, makita 40v track saw, makita 40v plunge saw, how to make a circular saw guide, how to make a track saw

Id: TYHmfM84ew4

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2024