I don’t know what Dewalt was thinking with this…

this is the 60 volt cordless Dewalt track saw I paid 619 dollars for it ouch and I have never ever ever recommended this all to anyone and because of that I usually get a lot of negative feedback from the DeWalt Fanboys who are offended that I never talk about their beloved track saw of choice but the reason why I never recommend this is because there is one Crazy Design flaw that I am still shocked DeWalt made and hasn't fixed so why am I talking about it now I recently got this unmarked white box in the mail inside this inconspicuous box is a brand new product that no one knows about that promises to fix the design flaw in this saw so I'm curious to see if this will actually make me do a 180 and start recommending this saw to more people and while I have my hands on the saw we're gonna see if there's any other flaws that people aren't talking about what you get for 619 a case that can fit inside a Milwaukee packout case you still don't get why Milwaukee made their box this big but pretty huge what I love about the case is it's nice and it's compact however the plastic isn't as thick or high quality as cases you'd find with Festool Makita or even Milwaukee however it is nice to get a case the track that comes with the kit is four inches longer than your typical standard 55 inch track and it's double-sided which means you can cut on either side to my knowledge this is the only track I know that does this the saw also has a kickback lock which when engaged prohibits the saw from moving backwards on the track you can push it forward but you can't bring it backwards which is a very nice safety feature it also has a spring-loaded riding knife more on that later and it comes stock with the 42 tooth blade which honestly I always swap these out for a CMT blade but it's a decent blade and this saw uses a 60 volt single battery and naturally you get to charger it with this kit the first test I did on this was just cutting a regular sheet of plywood and here's the thing every track saw I ever use because plywood just fine if you marry the saw to the track which we'll talk about later because that's important you're going to cut a straight line and you're going to have good cut quality I've never used a track saw that failed the plywood test so it's really not worth going into depth and showing you tons of tons of stuff about plywood because fly was pretty easy to cut now the one test that I do on every track saw is where I try to push its limits I have a piece of eight quarter or two inch hard maple then a subscriber named Tiny Sean bought to do these tests so big shout out and thank you to Sean for doing that my belief is if any track saw including a cordless track saw can do a full Plunge two inches in hard maple it can do anything else I did this on the Milwaukee track saw and I was really impressed with how the cordless Milwaukee handled and I have to say with this saw I had similar results basically I do a full plunge and I don't push too hard but I also don't go slow I just try to go naturally and put as much force on the saw as it feels like it wants to handle and I was really surprised and impressed with how well it caught I didn't smell any burning and I never felt like the motor was struggling in fact I probably could have gone a little bit faster now there were two things that I noticed when doing this first it didn't cut the full depth and so this saw while I maxed out its depth tended to cut a little less than two inches and it claims to be able to cut a little bit more than that in comparison the Milwaukee did just fine I ended up having to finish like the bottom 8 or 16th with a pull saw all and I noticed two things that are really curious and I really don't understand the first thing is the off cut was really really smooth like the face was really smooth like almost as if it had been sanded but the piece that you would want to keep had all these rough saw marks similar to Marks you'd see in a band saw at first I thought this was from the pole saw but I was pulling in the opposite way that these marks are going and so I'm left to believe and I could be wrong here but it seems like the saw blade is is leaving the piece that you want to keep rougher than the piece that's the off cut now when I compared this to the slice that the Milwaukee Trek saw cut you can see the difference between night and day the Milwaukee left a really clean finish and this DeWalt would lift a jagged finish now I'm assuming that's the saw blade and the angle of the teeth and probably not the saw but it is worth mentioning the last test I did was a 45 degree test I don't understand this because I'm not a math and geometry guy but I'm actually pretty impressed a lot of people have this question which is when you cut that rubber Splinter guard at 90 degrees and then you move to 45 degrees do you ruin or alter your rubber Splinter guard some people think that you would even need to change it after you do a 45 degree cut according to my test it's right on the money you don't need to change it however they work out the geometry you can cut a 45 or a bevel and not it doesn't alter the Splinter guard and in fact you still have the Splinter guard accuracy which is really cool good job DeWalt and before I offend every DeWalt Fanboy and ruin any chance of DeWalt ever liking me or sponsoring me let's talk about the things that I like about this song first I love that it comes with a case not every track saw you buy comes with the case I'm not really even sure you need a case but it's nice to have a case another thing I love about it is it just uses One battery I have the Makita 36 volt and one cool thing about that saw is it uses the 18 volt batteries that so many people have but having two batteries is kind of clunky I was pleasantly surprised with how powerful this is and how the motor sounds and handles it has a brushless motor and I really like it all these brushless motors sound a little bit different but they all kind of feel the same to me whether it's makita's brushless motor which sounds like this or festos brushless matter that sounds like this or Milwaukee's brushless motor that sounds like this or the DeWalt brushless motor that sounds like this when you compare that to my trusty corded Makita non-brushless motor you can really tell the difference I'm not a motor expert but it sounds like I might need to have my motor service on my Makita let me know if you hear something that's off the build quality of this thing is a plus lots of metal in places where you would normally see people use plastic it is heavy especially when you put that big 60 volt battery on um it feels like a heavy duty tool I have the Ryobi and the wind track saws and I always say they feel like Fisher Price especially the Ryobi it feels like it's a kids toy this saw feels like a fist tool Makita Milwaukee like they're in that level of quality and so the fit and finish and quality of the tool I am really impressed with lastly the dust extraction is pretty good I like that the hose from my Festool dust extractor fits on it and I know a lot of people don't have dust extractors but this syntek hose that a lot of people buy on Amazon that you can hook up to your shop vac it fits on there as well so good job DeWalt not changing the diameter of your Port like some other people do well done quarks I don't like now the next two sections will be about Corks And then I think failures now these corks aren't necessarily deal breakers but they are little like idiosyncrasies that I think everybody who's considering buying this should come to grips with because they're things that you're not really going to find out until you hold the saw and play with it and honestly I was really surprised by a lot of them the first Quirk I don't like is when you marry the saw to a track this is the first thing you should do when you get a track saw you should take the saw put on the track and then there's these two knobs that you want to loosen and then slowly tighten As you move the saw back and forth sneaking up on a good friction fit what you're looking for is enough friction to move forward without going side to side on all the saws that I've used they're pretty easy but on this saw you actually have to loosen a screw with either a flat head or a hex key that they don't include in order to begin to mirror your track it's not a huge deal but I can totally see a lot of people just pulling this out not wanting to bother with that and not really understanding how important it is to marry your your track saw to your track and just going for it and finding deflection and finding inaccuracies and getting frustrated and ruining their Splinter guard I don't understand why DeWalt made it that difficult to adjust this after playing with it I was able to dial it in just fine however it took a minute or two longer than any other truck cells that I have and I feel like this was unnecessarily difficult for whatever reason DeWalt decided to do a double hinge on the plunge I've tried to figure out what the benefit is to this I honestly can't see one I honestly don't care about the double hinge I don't like it every track saw that I've used you it plunges downward and it's kind of easy to start maybe because I'm used to that this one every time I would go to start I'd have to like remember oh push down and then move forward with all the other track saws it's just one motion like as you're going down you can go forward and it seems more intuitive I'm sure that after using this for a while I would get used to that extra mechanics but for me it just seems like maybe an unnecessary cute design Innovation that no one asked for changing the blade was frustrating and I don't mean the nitpick but this one really had me scratching my head every track saw and circular saw I've ever used and that probably you have ever used has this one lever right here that is universally the button to lock the arbor so that you can hold the blade still while you release the tension on the nut and I am embarrassed to say this but for 45 minutes I sat here trying to hold this button and and wondering what is going on I ended up taking this whole side cover off to figure it out and it took me 45 minutes to figure out that button that looks like it holds the blade doesn't you have to use three different buttons in combination to do this and even in their manual they say to turn this button all the way and then push it down not so you turn it halfway and then push it down and that's when you can hold your Arbor still and then unscrew your blade I don't know why they made it that difficult and I don't know why they made it unintuitive but changing your blade should be a pretty easy and straightforward thing maybe I'm nitpicking but it really confuses me why they would change up the standard protocol and how to change a saw blade now to everyone whose favorite color is yellow I apologize for what I'm about to do I found four massive failures in design flaws with this that to me are kind of a big deal the first is the riving knife I was really pleased to find that DeWalt has a spring-loaded driving knife I'm really not a big fan of driving knives I mean for track saws they're nice to have but they're not the end of the world if you don't have one but if you're gonna put one on I want to use it I immediately noticed that this driving knife was out of line with the blade I thought well maybe that's a design feature and maybe as you Plunge in the driving knife will come in behind the blade no like massive problems I ended up taking the driving knife off and looking down it and wondering is the riving knife the problem or is the mechanics the problem and I thought maybe there was something in the saw that was causing the deflection and not the writing knife because to my eye the riving knife looks straight until I took it to my cast iron table saw and I laid it down and looked to see if I could find light underneath it and I found to my surprise and maybe yours it was massively bent right out of the box now I'm chalking this up to maybe a factory defect or a lemon I'm really curious for those of you who have the salt did you have the same experience not the biggest deal I could probably Hammer this out and get it straight but for over six hundred dollars for what's supposed to be a good brand I was surprised now having a riving knife is nice but it being bent is a deal breaker for me and so I just took it out because that's probably the safest thing but that's not the reason that I don't recommend this saw another failure that I found was in the 45 degree bevel indicator it's not clear to me which area you're supposed to measure the top or the bottom I think the top but what makes it worse is there are no like detents or positive stops to help you with common angles and I didn't think this was a big deal until I started looking at all my other cells including the Milwaukee how Milwaukee does the indicator is way better they give you a very very sharp point that you can reference off of and with this big yellow piece of plastic and it was kind of difficult when you're doing the angles like that you want good hard accuracy not I think this is 45 the 45 degree measurement is a bit of a picky gripe and honestly I don't do a whole lot of 45 degree Cuts so it's not a big deal in my view it is a little bit of a failure to design flaw but it's not the flaw that keeps me from recommending this song the most shocking thing that I did not expect to see as a failure was this Saul's accuracy and what I mean by accuracy is understanding your depth of cut if you've never used a track saw one of the coolest things is you don't need to measure you can just set the depth you want to cut at a lot a lot of times you set the material you're cutting at and it will add a couple of millimeters below that to account for the blade to go all the way through but with this saw there are two fatal flaws first I don't love how you have to unscrew this with Makita you have to unscrew but the function is a lot better with this saw I actually had to use about two hands to adjust it hold it where I want it to be and then screw it in but the Fatal flaw is that it's off by about an eighth of an inch and I tried several times to test this and showing here on some hard maple how I did a full cut and measured it and the scale is just off no big deal maybe you need to fine tune that the problem is in the manual there's no instructions on fine-tuning it and looking at the saw and messing with it there's no way you can fine tune this when you contrast that with something like the Milwaukee and and for clarification I know Nikita guy in a festival guy I'm not a Milwaukee Fanboy but Milwaukee nailed this all you do is push a button to adjust your depth It's amazing And you can fine tune with this micro adjust here which is brilliant at first I thought well maybe this saw is off because it's it's not accounting for the track but even in the Watson marketing material they say and I quote depth scale accurately indicates exact depth of cut accounting for track thickness right not according to my test and I know what I'm doing accuracy is a big deal especially when you claim that the depth scale accurately gives you your measurement massive failure but that's not the reason why I never recommend this saw the reason that I never recommend this DeWalt track saw to anybody is because of the clever double-sided track first I've never been in a situation where I wished I wish I could just run it back and go down the other side I've always been fine using a track that has one hard Edge in the Splinter guard on one side it feels like DeWalt was trying to be cute here but the reason why I hate this and the reason why I never recommend anyone to buy this is because you inadvertently cut yourself off from being able to do one of the coolest things you can do with track saw and that is accessorize it with third-party inventions other people have come up with to solve unique specific problems in particular I love putting a guide rail Square on my track because it instantly turns my track into a Precision Square which means you can get 90 degree Cuts really really fast every time because you don't have to take multiple measurements and take multiple markings on your piece and line everything up this little bitty aluminum square massively speeds up your efficiency and your accuracy but the key to the square is that it has to have a hard Edge to reference off of and clip on and obviously with DeWalt brilliant double-sided track you can't do that because you're referencing the rubber Splinter guard and that's where this box comes in inside of this box is a new version of Tso's rail square that most have never seen before TSO claims to have figured out how to attach a guide rail Square to a DeWalt guide rail the same way in an accurate and repeatable fashion every time here's why this matters because when you take advantage of accessories like this you can turn your track saw into a table saw in your hand I recently did a video where I broke down all of the major mistakes people make at the table saw and I was shocked to learn that 4 000 people get part of their hand amputated every year at the table saw because they inadvertently make contact with that shiny spinny thing that can change your life in a matter of a split second and so anytime I can not take full sheets of plywood to a table saw I'm gonna try to do that there's a little known accessory that most track saw owners don't know about and it's called parallel guides in parallel guides clip onto your track and allow you to make parallel measurements to one edge of your board and make repeated Cuts like you would do at the table saw and the coolest thing about this that no one talks about is that because there is a movable flip stop just like you would set your width that you want to rip onto your table saw and you don't need to Mark or measure your main material you can do the same function with this you can set your parallel guide to give you what dimension you want and then go and rip that as many times as you want this is huge on a job site and it's huge in a parking lot it's huge in an area where you may not have a table saw or you may not have the room to break down big sheets of plywood at your table saw and with this new invention you can screw on Parallel guides to your guide row square and like that for the first time a DeWalt track saw can be as fast and accurate and definitely safer than the table saw I was skeptical but I ripped down a full sheet of MDF in a matter of a minute or two cutting all these pieces to the same Dimension and I will say that is the bright spot with the saw with the scene that TSO made now maybe you're watching this and you don't have a DeWalt track saw and you have a Craig or Makita or a Festool or a Triton or a win or a Milwaukee the good news is TSO makes versions for those saws and when the Milwaukee first came out Tso's guide Rose Square wasn't guaranteed to be accurate but their new version that they just came out with is compatible with Milwaukee so if you have any of those main track saws and you want to get in on these cool accuracy and repeatability and safety tricks you can do with your track saw TSO is my favorite third-party accessory to use now disclaimer they're not a sponsor they don't sponsor anybody okay I bought my guy real square a couple years ago before they knew who I was sometimes the marketing department at TSO will give me a discount code allowing you to get the Guide rail square and other things cheaper than I paid for them and if they're able to do that I'll put that on the screen or in the description below but no guarantees this guide rail square is a good development for the future of the DeWalt saw because without it I would definitely say do not buy this saw but if you already have this saw or you are prone to the DeWalt platform and all the quirks and features that I mentioned if they don't bother you then this recent product by TSO is going to make you really happy so do I recommend this saw before I give you my answer I would love to know from those of you who are all in on the DeWalt platform like I am on Makita and Festool do the quarks and failures in my opinion of this saw are they enough to make you want to get a different brand track saw or are you okay with those little quirks and features just because the convenience of heavy One battery I really care about what you think because this is the only cordless Dewalt thing that I have and it's kind of hard for me to formulate what other DeWalt people would think at the end of the day does this track saw do tracks all things yes as long as you marry it to your track and you practice good track saw etiquette and you understand how to calibrate the depth it's going to cut a straight line it's going to give you what you want it's going to have enough power in my opinion for most of the things that you're going to do it's not as expensive as all the others in the market so if you're dead set on the wall and you think I'm being overly harsh it'd probably be fine and now you can have all the TSO accessories you want and you're not left out in the doghouse like you were before however my opinion is for the price of six hundred dollars uh the riving knife shouldn't be bent and they should be honest about what the battery is and that it's an actually an 18 volt nominal battery and not some 60 volt marketing thing I think the depth gauge should be better but the brushless motor is good and I think it's powerful enough and it seems like it's good quality if I were spending 600 on a saw and I didn't own any other track salt knowing everything I know now I would probably try to stretch towards and assuming I wanted cordless I would probably stretch towards the Milwaukee or the festival cordless with the edge going to Festool simply because I have a festival CT mini dust extractor that has Bluetooth and the Festool tracksaw will turn that on and off and I like that convenience even when I use that dust extractor with my Milwaukee even though I have a Bluetooth remote on the end when I'm in the zone I often forget to hit that button to turn on the saw for whatever reason until I see sawdust going everywhere and I realize I never turn the vacuum on and so I really really really am impressed with the Milwaukee saw but the Festool would be a little bit more convenient in my setting now that would be spending upwards of 800 on a truck slot which is crazy I still think the corded Makita is probably the best all-around value track saw that most people can get I think I got it on Black Friday several years ago for 300 and something and this Black Friday it was about that much and I know a ton of people got that black Friday deal and so if you ever come across a good deal on a corded Makita that thing is a Workhorse I wish it had a longer cord and I wish it had a brushless motor but I think my motor could probably be serviced and maybe the brushes just need to be changed out and it would be fine however having used the brushless motor on this DeWalt and the 36 volt 40 volt makitas the 18 volt Milwaukee and the festral cordless and a brushless motor is really nice so it kind of just depends on how much money you have to spend and what brand that you like and whether dust extraction being automatic is is enough for you and all this stuff um at the end of the day honestly a lot of these saws they do the job it just matters what bells and whistles you want and how much money you want to spend if you ever want to maximize the dust extraction on your track saw or protect your hose or protect your guide rails or hang your guide rails or even hang your TSO accessories there's a link down below where you can see all the stuff that me and my wife make it's support from people like you that enable me to make videos like this without being in the pockets of any of these Brands thank you

Channel: wittworks

Views: 140,968

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Id: YI3KcCvc2i8

Length: 25min 24sec (1524 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023