Shopsmith Forums

Thanks Ed
you mentioned about the track, I seen one fella that added a square block of wood to the bottom of his router and was using the track as a straight edge to make dado and rebates/{rabbits} , once concern I had was dust getting under the track and throwing off the set up , you mentioned the alignment of the track when setting it up. it appears the track alone is the heart of the system and several saws will work with some tracks .

There are rubber strips under the track to help hold it in position and there are clamps that fit in the bottom channel of the track for alignment when cutting. There are a couple of companies that are making router adapters for the different tracks. Festool has an adapter for their router to be used with their track but it does not work with any router. Makita also has one for their router but again only works with their router and is hard to find. Woodline has what they call a Dadoright https://www.woodline.com/collections/dadoright that will allow any router to work with specific tracks. There is a company on Etsy that is 3D printing adapters for specific routers and the domino to different tracks https://www.etsy.com/shop/ToolCurve?ref ... =955226532. Some of the accessories that work on the Festool style track have to be slightly modified to work on the Makita track because the track has a small lip for the anti-tip feature that is not present on the Festool track. I do not know if this lip is on any of the other Festool compatible tracks.

One other thing that may be important is that not all different brands of tracks are the same length, which goes back to what Ed was saying about how close to the end of the track you can get for alignment. The Festool and Makita tracks are 55 inches while the Bosch is 63 inches. I have found recently is that several companies have started selling shorter sections (30 - 40 inches normally) of track designed to be used when cutting pieces about 2 feet in width or smaller.

I know that there are several modifications that some people have done to the ShopFox and Grizzly track saws to increase their dust collection and to better match the performance of the higher priced saws. I do not know if there are mods to any of the other lower priced saws. I do have a listing of the different mods that were done that I compiled for my son's Grizzly track saw. I will post it if anyone wants it.

Thanks Brenda
More good information!!
I for one would enjoy seeing / reading about the mods . Pretty sure that a mod would not be as good as a factory design but if it works and saves money it is worth looking into .

As I noted on the document, I copied and pasted the info from various other people and tried to organize it. Some of the problems that were identified have been corrected by the manufacturer already. These are just the ones that I thought my son would be interested in.

Brenda much have been checking out my shop:
BTW the router attachment needed a little tender loving care to fit...... and a set of screws to mount it.

Ed

On a side note I got these but haven't decide where to mount them..... and it has been a while now....... par for me.
You can mount them to places like garage doors even so pretty cool but not something that will work for me.

Ed

I embedded an 8' length of T track in plywood and, attached a short piece of the corresponding insert to my Skil 77. Works great for sheet goods as well as lumber. Can't break it down so, it's a bit cumbersome to store. But it's accurate and cheap.

Nice !! A big difference between those and using my 6ft level or the a factory edge of another sheet as a guide .

I do have a Festool TSC 55 which is the battery operated model. I have had it for about 18 months and I can't say enough good things about it. It has a dust bag that is very efficient so you can go completely cordless without a hose. That is good for a few cuts but the bag fills up pretty fast. For longer sessions I use the CT-36 dust extractor with a blue tooth battery in the saw. The vacuum automatically comes on when the saw is powered on which is really nice. I have had no kick back issues with mine but I guess if you tried hard you could get one. The only downside I see to the new model that just came out is the thin blade. The power on the TSC 55 is plenty for the standard 2.2mm blade and I have heard numerous complaints about the thin blade that the Makita uses due to the quality of cut. Therefore I would be happy with the older model I have at a lower cost than the new one, but then again you can purchase a standard blade for the new model if cost is not a driving factor.

I have been seeing a lot of good reports on the Kreg saw, especially on the dust issue . We are using our SS MKV on the remodel of our home , over the weekend it made some real saw dust , ripped a dado 3/4 inch deep and a inch wide on some 2x4 hickory . a track saw may have made truing up the 81 inch 2x4 hickory door frames a little easier .