Miter Saw

About 10 years ago I bought a number of Craftsman power tools from Sears, and while they have served me well over the years, I have been slowly upgrading as funds permitted.  The last Craftsman tool that I needed to upgrade was my 10" compound miter saw.  This saw has cut a ton of wood over the years, but I had been wanting to upgrade, primarily for more capacity as it could barely cut a 90° angle on a 2x6.

The saw that I was most excited about was the Festool Kapex.  I own a fair number of Festool tools and all have exceeded my expectations.  The ease of use, accuracy and dust-collection justify the extra expense in my mind.  In reading the glowing reviews of the Kapex I had no doubt that the Kapex would be the perfect saw, and worth the $1,400 price tag.  I purchased the Kapex from my local Woodcraft and two weeks later returned it!  Here are the reasons why:

1.  With every Festool power tool I own I have been blown away by the dust collection, and I think my expectations may have been too high with the Kapex.  The marketing materials state that it will collect 90% of dust, but I only found that to be true in some circumstances.  Cutting a 1x4, sure the dust collection is good, but when I was cutting an 8/4 x 12" piece of poplar, not so much.  While I firmly believe that the Kapex does a better job of dust collection than any other miter saw...I wasn't blown away, especially for a $1,400 saw.

2.  The Kapex was not square out of the box, not even close.  Both the bevel angle and the miter angle were out of square.  Again another expectation that may have been too high, but I spent about half an hour attempting to get the saw to cut square.  In my opinion, a $1,400 saw should be square out of the box.

3.  The table was not level with the wings.  This is a little hard to describe, and I should have taken a picture, but the inner-table that rotates with the saw was about 1/32" lower than the wings.  Evidently this is normal for the Kapex (according to some information I found on the internet), but I hadn't seen the "feature" on any other miter saw I have ever used.  This may or may not cause an issue with making cuts, but I believe that it should be perfectly level, especially for a $1,400 saw!

4.  The blade that came with the Kapex is awesome (see note #6 below).

Thankfully Festool offers a 30-day return opportunity, which I have never had to exercise until now, and I was able to easily return the saw to Woodcraft.

So I ended up purchasing a DeWalt 780 12" sliding miter saw.  Here are a few of my observations about the saw:

1.  The dust collection is ok (not as good as the Kapex), but for $600, I didn't expect great dust collection.

2.  The saw wasn't accurate out of the box and I spent about half an hour getting the saw to cut square (only the miter was out of square, the bevel angle was good), but for $600, I didn't expect it to be square out of the box.

3.  The saw table that rotates IS level with the wings...why isn't the Kapex?

4.  I got the DeWalt mobile cart, a $200 value for FREE when I purchased the saw from my local big-box store (no mail in rebate required)!

5.  The saw has plenty of power and capacity.

6.  As expected, the blade that came with the DeWalt was a few steps above garbage so I did purchase an 80-tooth Freud blade that is much better.

So for me the bottom line is that the Kapex is a very good saw, but not worth $1,400 in my opinion.  The DeWalt is a pretty good saw, and is worth $600, especially with the stand thrown in.  At the end of the day, I was able to get the DeWalt for $600, and now I have enough left over to get the Festool Domino I have been drooling over!