Designed to fit Festool and other track saws, Freud America’s new Tracksaw blade series offers new options to owners of those and similar saws. I’ve been using a Festool plunge cut saw for years and have never had any complaints with the genuine Festool blades I’ve used. But now that DeWalt and other manufacturers are entering the track saw market, it’s great to see a tooling manufacturer like Freud offering blade options specifically for these saws.

The track saw difference

For those unfamiliar with these kind of saws perhaps it’s worth taking a moment to describe them. These saws look a lot like traditional handheld circular saws, but they have some important differences. In the first place, they are specifically designed to ride a metal track for very precise and straight cuts. Some woodworkers actually use these instead of a panel saw, cutting sheet goods right on top of a stack to save material handling, especially in job site work. The saws also are plunge cutting, meaning the blade automatically retracts into the saw housing offering improved safety and dust collection, as well as more precise plunge cutting.

Four blades from Freud

Reflecting the diversity of work track saws are designed to do, Freud has offered four blades initially in its Tracksaw series. All are thin-kerf design and include Freud’s anti-vibration design with the company’s proprietary TiCo Hi-Density carbide and Perma-Shield coating. There is a 48-tooth Hi-ATB blade with 5-degree hook angle designed for plywood, melamine, and finish work. For general purposes and heavier construction work, there is a 28-tooth ATB with 12-degree hook angle. For ripping, there is a 14-tooth ATB blade with 20-degree hook angle. And finally, specifically for laminate flooring, there is a 48-tooth TCG profile blade. All the blades are the standard 160mm diameter used on Festool and similar saws.

Smooth cuts

In our tests, all the blades mounted precisely and cut smoothly in the Festool saw. As one would expect from Freud blades, the cuts were excellent in all materials as designed. We haven’t cut enough with these blades to determine durability, but we are confident they will stand up just as well as other Freud blades we’ve used and are competitively priced compared to Festool. For more information, visit www.freudtools.com.