Slide Compound Saw Buying Guide By Festool

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Video Transcript

We’re going to take a look at the slide compound saws and have a talk about applications. Let’s consider what is really important when you think about purchasing a slide compound saw. When it comes to carpentry construction, cabinetry and joinery, the quality of cut is important particularly when you're working on site. You need to be able to get on and off site efficiently and easily. So it's really important the slide compound saw offers quality of cut and easy adjustment for the particular angles.

You also want a system set up that makes it nice and easy to get tools on-site. Some on the market are quite heavy and bulky to carry. They're very time-consuming to set up, they take a lot to get on site and take up a fair bit of room when you're packing them up. A lack of mobility just means it's a lot harder when you're working on site. It makes it hard to get to the site, to get setup and to do the job.

You really need to have a look at how you can work quickly with a slide compound saw. They can be different things such as being able to measure angles really quickly, transfer the angles from bevels and so on.

This is a challenge with a lot of applications when using a slide compound saw. Ideally you need. different heights of cut depending on what you're doing. You could be doing fixing, fit-out work, then again, you could be cutting frame and that type of thing. So for different applications, we need different size tools as well.

Larger saws are used for on-site applications, framing or cutting larger boards where we need a bit more movement. When we move from place to place, room to room, we'll need something that's a bit lighter that can still suit that job. Some key considerations to look at are portability, precision of cut and features that cover various applications. When we look at different applications, we could be cutting a whole lot of different materials. It could be timber. It could be aluminium. We might also cut acrylic product.

Where we need it, the variable speed is quite important. With both these saws here, you've got variable speed. We can have the. right blade for the system of blades connected to it and also the right speed to get the best quality of cut.

It’s quick and easy to set up, ideally with dust extraction. Dust extraction is really important so we can keep our dust down, work a lot more healthily and clean up at the end of the day. Little things on these saws such as the extension arms give us the opportunity to have scales that we can read off, rather than pulling your tape out of our pocket, making the mark and then lining it up with the saw blade.

These measurement scales work exactly to each side of the blade which makes it quick to work. In both cases here when we’re cutting angles we've also got a laser line on this one that gives a reference to the left and right hand side of the blade. Sometimes. it's a little bit more time consuming on site. This one has a little LED display which shadows the back of the blade.

The beauty of that is we know exactly where our cut lines are going to be when we work with angles. When we look at a slide compound saw, we really need to make sure that we've got an easy system to use. Always look for one that can help you work quickly. As an example, this particular one here, which we call a smart bevel is an angle finder. It can really make work with the slide compound quick. We can get our angle. We can lock it in position. We can then transfer this exactly to the saw and this will bisect our angle. Systems like that really make it easy to work quickly and also cut right the first time. If you like this slide compound saw buying guide , one of our technical consultants can come out and see you on site. They can set this up, you can use it, you can have a look at different applications you want to use it for and see exactly how it'll benefit you on site.

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