Festool TKS 80

[Chip shop]

Anyone? I have been away from the forums for a bit, but was considering one as a site saw and was expecting you lot to be all over it with good/bad/indifferent (tick as appropriate), but there's virtually nothing. Not much more on FOG either! I'd have thought the Festool Sawstop thing would have provoked some reaction. Has anyone got one? Is it OK/carp/brilliant/Sawstop eat my children/Festool evil buy old Record/Stanley instead?

 

[Doug71]

I think one of the problems is that it's meant to be a site saw yet it's only available in 240v which doesn't make much sense for us in the UK.

The basic model is £1,500+ and you don't really get much for your money apart from the Saw Stop feature which is obviously a plus but I do like to think we are a bit more sensible with our table saws here in the UK than America so it's not as much of a selling point.

I guess the other thing is if you were using it on site it only takes someone to put a piece of wet timber through and it can fire leaving you out of action until you get a new blade and cartridge and £150 out of pocket.

The full kit is £2,500+, if I was looking at spending that kind of money on a portable saw I would probably be looking at the Mafell Erika instead.

 

[Chip shop]

I think one of the problems is that it's meant to be a site saw yet it's only available in 240v which doesn't make much sense for us in the UK.

The basic model is £1,500+ and you don't really get much for your money apart from the Saw Stop feature which is obviously a plus but I do like to think we are a bit more sensible with our table saws here in the UK than America so it's not as much of a selling point.

I guess the other thing is if you were using it on site it only takes someone to put a piece of wet timber through and it can fire leaving you out of action until you get a new blade and cartridge and £150 out of pocket.

The full kit is £2,500+, if I was looking at spending that kind of money on a portable saw I would probably be looking at the Mafell Erika instead.

All fair points, cheers. I'm still a little surprised there hasn't been more made of them (good or bad) though.

 

[greendolphin]

I wish they would have just sold the US version here in the UK.
https://www.sawstop.com/table-saws/by-model/jobsite-sawI had one on a project in Los Angeles a few years ago and it is fantastic.
It is $1599 - £1450 w/ v.a.t.
The fence is great.
The festool fences are solid when in place but a drag to move around - cumbersome and slow
Having to turn something is much slower than a traditional fence mechanism.

That being said, I will probably get the TKS 80 to replace a cms w/ TS 55 in a tiny shop.
The quality/portability combination is hard to beat.
Not enough room for a proper table saw.


Be well

Jack

 

[BHwoodworking]

i'll be getting one, when i finally build myself a decent sized workshop. not allowed a ts..... due to a miter saw incident?!?!?!?

oh well. i'll get myself a tsc to keep my festool withdrawal symptoms under for now..... then a ctm midi. then a ets 125, then a T18+3 then a df500, then a nother then blar blar blar.

sorry i digress. but yes i agree with the OP. i am finding it really hard to get much info on it, most important bit of info i am missing is the size with all the gubbins attached.

 

[Nelsun]

If you're really humming and hawing over it, Festool are doing one-to-one demos via video link. Just go to their site and it'll nag you to book a demo... whatever you try and do.

 

[Ollie78]

I think one of the problems is that it's meant to be a site saw yet it's only available in 240v which doesn't make much sense for us in the UK.

The basic model is £1,500+ and you don't really get much for your money apart from the Saw Stop feature which is obviously a plus but I do like to think we are a bit more sensible with our table saws here in the UK than America so it's not as much of a selling point.

I guess the other thing is if you were using it on site it only takes someone to put a piece of wet timber through and it can fire leaving you out of action until you get a new blade and cartridge and £150 out of pocket.

The full kit is £2,500+, if I was looking at spending that kind of money on a portable saw I would probably be looking at the Mafell Erika instead.

I agree entirely with this statement.
I have been looking for an Erika 85 at a decent price for ages since I saw one at a trade show , hard to find but a great saw.
I also think if you don't need to move it you can find a good deal on proper euro style table saw with a sliding table for that money.

Ollie

 

[Midge]

I think one of the problems is that it's meant to be a site saw yet it's only available in 240v which doesn't make much sense for us in the UK.

The basic model is £1,500+ and you don't really get much for your money apart from the Saw Stop feature which is obviously a plus but I do like to think we are a bit more sensible with our table saws here in the UK than America so it's not as much of a selling point.

I guess the other thing is if you were using it on site it only takes someone to put a piece of wet timber through and it can fire leaving you out of action until you get a new blade and cartridge and £150 out of pocket.

The full kit is £2,500+, if I was looking at spending that kind of money on a portable saw I would probably be looking at the Mafell Erika instead.

Think I'm right in saying that the 'Sawstop' function can be switched off to enable wet timber to be cut without triggering the cartridge, although this does seem to defeat the object of having it in the first place!

 

[Spectric]

For site work you might be better off with a plunge saw and track, been a fair bit of discussion round here on the pro's and cons but @JobandKnock has given some good info as he uses them on site. I am now using a 110V Makita because it is a good basic saw without any frilly bits since J&K's input and has a scoring feature if needed.

 

[Jake]

If the choice is a Festool table saw for site work (irrespective of the price and sense of that) then I can't see why anyone would choose the TKS80 over the CS70 unless it was to protect employees for H&S and insurance reasons. Other than the saw stop and the small extra blade height, it costs more and doesn't double up as a mitre saw which is the best argument for the CS70 (or Erika) existing as a site (or any) saw that there is at all.

 

[Gordon Tarling]

I had a table saw accident last year and it's something I don't wish to repeat. I was so fortunate in not losing any digits or real function, though I have scarring on two fingers and thumb of my left hand. The accident was entirely my own fault, caused my a moment's inattention. Therefore, I've been looking very closely at this TKS80 since it came out and am seriously considering getting one - all I have to do is to win wifey round to my way of thinking!

 

[Jake]

Were you using push-sticks?

 

[JobandKnock]

Other than the saw stop and the small extra blade height, it costs more and doesn't double up as a mitre saw which is the best argument for the CS70 (or Erika) existing as a site (or any) saw that there is at all.

For most site work I think a site saw simply isn't that necessary simply because it is generally cheaper to have the workshop/merchant dimension for you (labour costs).

I can't see there being many jobs where a flip over saw would be of interest these days, either, because pretty much every carpenter has a chop saw and certainly the flip overs we had in the past (mainly Elu/deWalt, Metabo and Makita) were very limited in capacity (lack of sliding action), not as accurate as a dedicated mitre saw (they tend to be pretty basic) and it was a slow job to change from ripping mode to chip saw mode - even slower if you needed to change the blade from a rip blade to a mitre/crosscut blade. Site saws, whether flip over or not are also far from ideal for cutting sheet materials and these days that task is more and more being done with a rail saw.

I liked my old Elu when I had it back in the 1980s but things have moved on since then

As to the Sawstop, if you have a table saw set up properly and you are using it properly I can't see many instances where you'd need it - because your hands would never be that close to the blade, would they?

 

[Gordon Tarling]

Were you using push-sticks?

I had been using the plastic stick which came with the saw, plus a plain stick to hold the work against the fence. I had actually finished the cut, with the workpiece clear of the back of the table and the waste piece still on the table. I had actually pressed the 'stop' switch and then reached over with my left hand to retrieve the waste piece - my mistake was in not waiting for the blade to come to a stop before reaching over.

 

[shed9]

I looked at getting a TKS80 earlier this year. I was actually looking at a Dewalt 7492 initially but ended up straying into Festool territory fairly quickly. I'm at the end stage of my own house build in final trim / fit out and really could not be bothered to keep going back into the workshop to cut work on the TS so wanted something in the house over this term.

It became a final decision between the TKS80 and the CS70 which were both the same price at the time. The TKS has a slight edge on blade height (10mm) and is slightly wider (80mm) but really it's the sawstop tech that is the pivot between the two saws. That said, the pull feature of the CS70 swung it for me. I'd lusted after a CS or Erika for years and so pushed the button on a CS70. Festool contacted me after the saw was delivered to remind me of their trial service, i.e. I could always ask for a full refund if it wasn't for me after a defined number of days and equally could have swapped it out for a TKS if I decided I'd made an error in choice. This part of the after sales service from Festool is kind of why I strayed into Festool territory in the first place. I can't even find a telephone number for Dewalt.

My point of the preamble up there ^?

The TKS80 and the CS70 weigh about the same at around 37kg which in my opinion is at the limit of what the average person can lift unaided without mechanical advantage. I'd bought the CS70 as a site saw (albeit the site being my home) but if wanted something to lug in the truck to take to multiple sites then this wouldn't be the saw I'd choose or recommend. The CS70 is a keeper for me, the pull feature is great and I wish I'd got one before now but 37kg is not site saw weight. Yes you could adapt a trolley or mount it on a movable frame but that kind of defeats the point of paying the high price for a tool such as the TKS.

Unfortunately Festool now own sawstop which is great for Festool and the people invested in the Festool system but ultimately licencing law (look what happened to the Bosh ReaXX) is going to prevent any pervasion of the principles of the technology itself. I appreciate that's just commerce but making the technology more freely available would prevent more accidents and bring the cost within the reach of the target audience of those who are more likely to have those accidents in the first place. Releasing the technology as a kind of open source concept would not lose sales to proportionally impact profit but would raise Festool's profile (beyond woodworking) to those not usually on their radar in a positive way. Every review of every machine with blade dropping tech would always point to Festool as the originator even though technically they never were. Also, most review summaries would make you question if you want the real thing or the pretender...

 

[Doug71]

I had been using the plastic stick which came with the saw, plus a plain stick to hold the work against the fence. I had actually finished the cut, with the workpiece clear of the back of the table and the waste piece still on the table. I had actually pressed the 'stop' switch and then reached over with my left hand to retrieve the waste piece - my mistake was in not waiting for the blade to come to a stop before reaching over.

I'm guessing you would have still had the same accident if using the TKS 80 as I presume once you press the stop button the sawstop feature would no longer work

Anybody know if it's active only when the saw is on or always active while the blade is spinning? Maybe it has an electric brake that means it only takes a couple of seconds to run down I don't know?

 

[Gordon Tarling]

What I've seen from Festool states that the protection is active until the blade has stopped. From what I've seen from t'internet, I fairly sure that my injury would have been greatly reduced had I been using a Sawstop saw. I was extremely lucky in that no tendons or nerves were damaged (or worse!) but I may not be so lucky should I ever have another moment's inattention.

 

[Doug71]

What I've seen from Festool states that the protection is active until the blade has stopped. From what I've seen from t'internet, I fairly sure that my injury would have been greatly reduced had I been using a Sawstop saw. I was extremely lucky in that no tendons or nerves were damaged (or worse!) but I may not be so lucky should I ever have another moment's inattention.

Did you have the blade guard on?

 

[Spectric]

I had been using the plastic stick which came with the saw, plus a plain stick to hold the work against the fence. I had actually finished the cut, with the workpiece clear of the back of the table and the waste piece still on the table. I had actually pressed the 'stop' switch and then reached over with my left hand to retrieve the waste piece - my mistake was in not waiting for the blade to come to a stop before reaching over.

You have learnt a valuable lesson the hard way, your digits are as valuable as your eyes and a machine is only safe when the cutting blade is static, so what was so important about getting the waste that could not have waited! This sawstop is in my opinion just making things more dangerous, as @JobandKnock said it is not needed if the saw is used properly. What happens when someone using a sawstop machine uses another one elsewhere and they have this embeded sense of safety. My solution would be simple, a sensor detects flesh too close to the blade and a big spring loaded fist smacks you in the head knocking you clean out of the way, lesson learnt.

 

[JobandKnock]

LOL. To be serious, though, there is something to be said for machines which are braked to a stop when to trigger is released or the stop button pressed (e.g. cordless circular saws and modern, compliant static machines)