Track saw purchase and extra track question

[signcrafter]

I'm going to be ordering a track saw, it's about time. After reading a lot of stuff I'm leaning towards the makita. Home depot has the makita saw with 55" rail for 415. I would like to get another rail to be able to cut 8 foot long sheet goods. Looks like I can get another 55" rail for about 70 bucks or a 110" rail for 236. Any reason to spend almost 4 times the money for the one piece rail instead of piecing the two smaller rails together? I don't mind switching them back and forth if needed vs spending 236 dollars for single piece long rail.

 

[dewalt378g]

Depends on how much 8' ripping you intend to do. I have a few 55s and one 106" (older Festool) Putting the two 55s together is great for ease of transport, but you need to be careful of knocking it out of alignment, that said, you need to align them every time you put them together. Not a horrible thing, but if you break down a lot of sheet goods, then you should get the single piece 110...it just makes life easy. Also, among other things, the long rail is great for making gang passes (such as dados) on all three sides of cabinet/shelf cases.

 

[WhoWhatNow]

I can't comment on the track question but I will point out that Zoro has the Makita listed at $478 right now. With their 30% off coupon it comes to $335 with free delivery. Might be worth the wait. That is how I purchased mine.

 

[theoldwizard1]

A track saw in concept is a good idea. In practice, it is a lot of money for a tool that might not get a lot of use.

 

[todd_fuller]

It comes down to two things in favor of a longer track:
- time saved not having to join and align the two sections,
- no possibility of misalignment

That being said, I use two 55" tracks and I just batch my long cuts so I don't waste my time connecting/disconnecting the track when I'm doing a project. Storing a huge track would be a PITA too. I'm not sure about the Makita track, but there are special tools to help align the tracks very accurately as well. Otherwise, I think most people just use a long straight edge or level to make an alignment. When I bought my track saw, one thing they mentioned was to always leave a small gap between the joint so you can get a good alignment without interference with the cut edges of each rail.

 

[bcradio]

A track saw in concept is a good idea. In practice, it is a lot of money for a tool that might not get a lot of use.

It will and does get a lot of use. By far my most used saw now.

It makes my circular saw obsolete and virtually makes my table saw obsolete.

Not to mention it has uses that only it can do as well as it being extremely portable.

This has me where I use my miter saw for cross cuts and my track saw for pretty much everything else.

OP: Your local Home Depot carries these? That's unusual. I also agree that two 55s are fine unless you will be making a very large number of long cuts (and as a non-pro, this isn't likely).