MAKITA DSP600 Track saw tip and blade alignment check

hello everyone today i'm going to talk about this track saw that i finally bought it's the makita dsp 600 zj it's the 36 volt saw runs on the two 18 volt makita batteries this is my first proper track saw you'll see in one of my other videos how i adapted my 165mm makita circular saw to fit onto a guide rail that a friend gave me um i started using that and really sort of did see the light in terms of track saws so i've invested in this there's not really much to say about it that hasn't already been said um you know i feel that it's a fantastic bit of kit and for cutting down boards and doing panel work it's it's really great i've used it a couple of times now properly in anger and i had some big sheets of inch mdf 25mm mdf to cut down and it's absolutely fantastic even though this the guide roll i've got with it is only a 1.5 meter guide rail even when you're cutting eight foot long or 2.4 meters you just sort of mark it out and do it in two hits so for me it's it's brilliant you know i know although i've got a table saw which is a fantastic bit of kit when you have to get big heavy sheets and be pushing them over the table saw this track saw obviously just takes the work out of that because you're putting the saw over the material rather than the material over the saw anyway as i said fantastic bit of kit i'm not really going to say anything that hasn't already been said about it the only thing i have noticed is a couple of things when you're actually using it on the tracks and that's what i'm going to talk about so as you all know the the saw runs in the track there's a groove in the bottom of the saw base that runs within the extrusion in the track it's got two little guides which you adjust to take out any slack and that is what guides it in the saw now what i'm mainly going to talk about what i've found is obviously there's a there's only two of these little guides here and the groove that they sit in obviously is much wider than the corresponding extrusion on the track hence why you have to adjust it out what i'm focusing on is when you get to the either the beginning or the end of the track that it falls out of these little guides here and then the saw becomes a lot more wobbly so i'm going to start off by putting the saw in the track there it goes now i've adjusted out the the slack already on these so it's nice and tight and then moves really nicely i put a little mark scratched a mark into the track here so when i slide my saw along when it comes to this the front of the base of the saw comes this mark i know that and obviously not only this front guide in on the rail but the rear guide is as well and if i push it any further back than that it comes off the it comes off the rail on that guide and it's a bit wobbly and i've done the same as i push it forward and i've got a similar mark here but i've also put that mark on the edge of the rail because this is under the saw so i won't see it coming until i'm over it whereas here i can eye it against the back of the saw so as i push the saw down the track i can basically keep an eye out for this little mark here and when it gets flush with the end back of the base of the saw there's my other mark i know that i can't really push it i've given myself maybe 10 mil tolerance on here but i know that if i push it anymore that the front guide is going to come off the rail and then the saw is going to get a bit wobbly now i don't think it would make that much difference to your cut but there's certainly a lot of slop on there so i would rather all my cutting and any material i'm cutting was done with both those guides in the saw and the only other couple of marks i've put in these are just guide marks um that this will give me my length of cut that is at 55 mil which is the maximum depth of cut of the saw and that is 18 so i would know simply that if i was cutting this piece of board here and i wanted to get as long a cut as i could if i put that mark on the end of the board i know that the saw will cut through that fully before it drops off the end of the track so it's only it's only a tiny thing but for me i would just rather all all of the cuts i did with both of those guides on the track i'll just quickly plunge it in there just to show you [Music] now the only thing i wanted to check was how this saw was running down the track they're not actually set parallel i think they're supposed to be set a half a degree to toe in at the front and i'm going to show you how i check this to see if it is or if it isn't so i've just put the saw at a sort of mid point in this sheet and what i'm basically going to do is just plunge it straight down in here and take and take the saw that way and then when i've done that i'm going to plunge the sawing further up the board and then bring the blade down and you'll see as the front of the blade comes across where the rear of the blade started you'll see that if it's towing in correctly there should be a very tiny step so i've set the saw here near we're just going to take like a saw kerf off the edge of this board i'll plunge a saw down and you'll see where the saw kerf is on the edge of the ply and then we'll i'll set the saw further back and run it through so now we can see that this is the back of the saw cut and if we could just focus that in there so what i'm going to do now is plunge the saw back further in here and then bring it through to this cut and what you'll find is well i'll show you you'll see what will happen let's get it nice and close as i can hmm so you can see that at first glance it would look like there's something wrong here but basically that's the difference between the five degree toeing of the blade now what will happen is i'll try and do this as we as we move the saw further along at the minute this cut here was where the back of the saw was so it's kicked out half a degree but as we move the saw forward these two cuts will come back into alignment [Music] um so hopefully you picked that up that as as the as the front part of the saw blade ended up coming back into its original line it just cleaned out that slight offset which is basically the difference between the half a degree the saw kicking out the back and at the front just a couple of things that i've picked up on the those marks that i put on the red will just help me to make sure that the saw stays in the track and doesn't drop off the end because i think it would definitely affect your cut maybe not by much but you know those two guide bushes in that base are there for a reason to keep it nice and straight in the track so once they drop out of the track you're not really making an effective cut and also just to illustrate to you that the the blade does toe in at the front it's half a degrees but i'm thrilled to bits with this saw and i hope to be doing lots more work with it and probably doing some more videos and showing you know what everybody knows it's no secret to everyone else who said me that these are an absolutely brilliant basic kit thanks for watching

Channel: The Tall Carpenter

Views: 17,432

Rating: 4.9268928 out of 5

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Id: D7SPeMTwNn8

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021