Theoretically, you can make a track as long as you like by joining shorter tracks together. Most tracks have square ends that are suitable for joining, but it pays to double-check. Whenever joining tracks, use a reliable straightedge to ensure that they join straight and true before tightening down the connectors.

For most track saw cuts you need to go all the way through the material, which means anything underneath is also going to get cut. To protect workbenches and floors (and prevent serious damage to blades on concrete), get a sheet of rigid foam insulation. It acts as a solid, sturdy sacrificial base you can use repeatedly with no damage to your bench or blades.

Track saws already deliver arguably the cleanest cuts around. But some materials, such as laminate countertops or plywood with paper-thin veneer, are still prone to tearout and splintering. To help prevent this, before making a full-depth cut in the workpiece, do a shallow scoring cut about 1/16″ deep. Then, lower the blade to make the full cut.

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These systems, like the Kreg Accu-Cut kit, use an adapter plate matched to the supplied tracks. The adjustable plate accepts your circular saw and holds it onto the plate with a series of small adjustable clamps. Once mounted, your saw slides smoothly on the track just the same as a “real” track saw.

As long as we’re talking adapters, there also are adapters that extend the usefulness of a track saw system to routers and jigsaws. Some track saw brands offer adapters (Festool, for example, has track adapters for their own routers and jigsaws), but you’ll find plenty available from third-party sources.

Router adapters are the easiest to find, with many made specifically for particular router makes and models and compatible with the most popular tracks. Setup couldn’t be easier and requires only that you remove the existing baseplate and replace it with the adapter plate. Once secured, the router rides the track smoothly and in a perfectly straight line.

Jigsaw adapters aren’t quite as numerous, but it’s very easy to make your own. If your jigsaw is equipped with a removable plastic shoe, simply purchase an extra shoe to use in combination with an easier-to-find router adapter. A generic router adapter that’s flat and not shaped for a specific router brand works best.

You can see how I’ve tricked out my DeWALT jigsaw. I lined up the extra DeWALT shoe and just glued it in place atop the router adapter. Any glue or plastics will work fine for this task.

As with the router (and track saw, of course), the cut is perfectly straight every time.

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Again, this could be done on the table saw with smaller workpieces. But when the stock becomes exceptionally long or wide, it’s better for the work to be stationary and fully supported on a workbench or other surface. A regular circular saw used with a clamped guide is a possibility, but a track saw’s plunge action speeds the operation up considerably and delivers better cuts with less splintering.

The key is to set up an easy jig. Here, I’ve simply pin-nailed a pair of 3/4″-thick guides to a sheet of ply, spaced so my 3/4″-thick workpiece can slide smoothly between them, while the track has a nice, wide surface for support. With the workpiece lined up to the edge of the jig guide, I made a starting cut near the workpiece end that extends slightly across both guide pieces. This becomes the registration cut.

Now, without moving the workpiece in the jig, reset the track for the second cut at the desired spacing between the kerf cuts, ensuring that it’s parallel to that first cut. Make the second cut and let the saw spin down. Slide the workpiece forward until the new cut lines up with the registration cut and make another pass. Continue the cut/slide/ cut/slide process until the workpiece kerfs are complete.

The finished workpiece bends with little effort, and the outside surface of the curve is nice and smooth. Keep in mind that a tighter bend radius requires narrower spacing between the kerfs, while a larger radius can get away with wider kerf spacing.

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Once again, it’s easier to take the saw to the work, and while you could cut 45-degree joints with a circular saw, the accuracy of a track saw makes it the perfect tool for the job. We’ll demonstrate the process with a smaller workpiece here, but the same process works with almost any length workpiece.

Measure and mark the workpiece where you want the joint edge, and line up the track. As with all narrow track cuts, clamping the track is a good idea. Tilt the blade to make a 45-degree cut and cut across the workpiece on your marks.

Remove the workpiece from under the track and set it aside. Then, take the new offcut piece you just created, flip it around and arrange the track exactly along the angled edge you just cut. There was a thin, unavoidable kerf created by the first cut, but with the track lined up carefully against the angle of the original cut, the kerf at the joint isn’t enlarged, allowing for the closest grain match possible. You can see in the bottom left photo how the spalted grain continues from one piece to the other.

Once the two mitered pieces are mated, the waterfall effect can be stunning.

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Echoing the take-the-saw-to-the-work mantra, once the slab is supported on a bench or other work surface, there’s no wrangling at all during the cut. You may need to make the cut in two passes for slabs that exceed the saw’s maximum cutting depth.

Making the first cut is straightforward. As an example, let’s use a 2-1/2″-thick slab of pine for a bench seat project that will have a live edge in the front but a squared back edge. To cut the slab to width, first measure and mark the workpiece and set the track appropriately to cut that back edge. Don’t be tempted to do the first cut as deep as you can, but rather make both cuts fairly equal by setting the saw’s depth to a bit more than half the slab’s thickness.

Now, you could have drawn a cut line all the way around the slab, but there’s no need. Flip the slab over to expose the uncut side (the only juggling you have to do), then slip thin pieces of wood or other material snuggly into the exposed kerf on each end to act as registers for the cut. Slide the track’s cutting edge carefully up against the registers, and bingo, you’ve exactly matched the cut on the other side.

Make the second pass to complete the cut. If you’ve done this correctly, there should be very little or even no “seam” where the two cuts overlapped. A light sanding will remove this easily, leaving a cleanly cut edge.

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For the longest time, there was only one track saw brand out there. Festool invented the category in the early 1960s and then owned the market for decades. The company refined the tool in the early ’80s, adding a plunge-cut action to the tool as well as incorporating a trim strip on the track edge that minimizes splintering. It took more than 40 years, but other manufacturers caught on and finally began producing their own versions of the track saw in the early 2000s. Today, virtually every major tool brand has one or more models.

You could describe track saws as ordinary circular saws on steroids, but that doesn’t accurately convey how useful they can be. While circular saws — and table saws, of course — are the cutting champs, track saws can handle certain tasks better, safer, faster and more accurately. Let’s look at some of these ways.

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No matter what wood you’ve used for your project, even soft pine, always use hardwood tenons for strength. Beech, maple and oak are good choices.

Begin by cutting the tenon stock to width and then planing it to thickness to match your mortise widths.

Before cutting your tenons to length, it’s a good idea to cut some glue relief grooves. A tight-fitting tenon can compress glue in the bottom of a mortise, creating a piston action that makes it hard to insert the tenon or prevents it from seating properly. (Or both.) Relief grooves give that compressed glue somewhere to go.

Set your table saw to cut a very shallow groove, about 1/16″. In making tenons for the 1-1/2″ mortises I created with the router in the previous section, I set the table saw fence to cut a groove down the center of the stock on the first side, then reset the fence to cut a pair of evenly spaced grooves on the other. I just ran the workpiece through, flipped it around and did it again for three grooves total. Plenty for glue relief.

If you’re making tenon stock for squared mortises, all you need to do is cut individual tenons to length and you’re done. For round-ended mortises like the one cut with the router earlier, simply install a small roundover bit in your router table and run the stock through to nicely round the edges before heading to the miter saw.

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I’ve set the bit high enough to easily measure and set the fence to center a 1/4″ x 1-1/2″ mortise in 3/4″ stock. I then drew start and stop lines directly on the router table that match the start and stop line on the workpiece. (A thin-tipped permanent marker pen is easily visible and comes right off with a touch of rubbing alcohol.) For even more visibility, you can continue the stop/start lines on the fence.

Mortises are deep cuts — this one is 1″ deep — so cut in multiple shallow passes of increasing depth. With the router on and the workpiece against the fence, lower it carefully onto the bit on the start mark, then push it smoothly along the fence to the stop mark.

Now, shut off the router, remove the workpiece, raise the bit a little more, and repeat the process until the mortise is complete. I’m just cutting this one mortise here, but if I were doing several, I’d run them all through on the first bit setting, raise the bit and run them all through in series.

Router bits cut incredibly clean and even mortises. As with the drill press, the mortises will be rounded. You can leave the mortise as-is for rounded tenons, or square the slot for squared tenons and then produce an ample amount of tenon stock.

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For drill press mortises you won’t need a special tool or jig like our first two examples, just a fence attached to the machine’s table and a sharp pencil.

Draw a centerline on your workpiece, then the outline of the desired mortise. I’ve marked out a 1/4″ x 2″ mortise in a piece of 3/4″ oak and have clamped the fence to center a 1/4″-diameter Forstner bit on the line. A Forstner bit is the best choice to make here for drilling clean, overlapping holes. But a sharp brad-point bit also does the job quite well.

Set the drill press depth stop to match your mortise and start drilling. I find it helpful to first drill the end holes to define the mortise length, then just move the workpiece from one side to the other between the initial holes, drilling overlapping holes to remove as much waste as possible.

With the mortise drilled, clamp the workpiece up and use chisels to clean and square the inner walls of the mortise. If you plan to use round-edged tenons, there’s no need to shape the mortise ends; otherwise, square the ends as well.

Here’s a tip: With some planning at the drill press, you could size the hole pattern to match that created by the Beadlock, allowing you to use ready-made Beadlock tenons. We’ll cover cutting tenon stock shortly.

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To demonstrate how it works, I’ll make a joint for a table apron at the top of the leg. As with the Domino, mark the workpieces with penciled alignment marks where the tenons go, centered in both the 1-1/4″ leg top and the end of the 3/4″ apron.

After securing the apron in a vise, loosen the drill guide block, and slide it to the “A” position and clamp the jig into place on the pencil mark at the apron end, centered in the jig’s window. Then, using a stopped bit, drill three holes lengthwise into the workpiece. The holes will be spaced slightly apart.

Next, undo the thumbscrews and slide the jig’s guide block to the “B” position, realigning the guide for drilling two more holes between the others, connecting them all. Remove the Beadlock and repeat the process with all the apron ends.

For the leg tops, the process is the same, although it’s easier to clamp the leg horizontally directly to a workbench. As before, drill the first three holes with the guide block in the “A” position, then drill the final two in the “B” position.

That’s all it takes to create the mortises, which remain a series of holes; no trimming or squaring necessary, as the Beadlock tenons are shaped to match. Just insert the Beadlock tenons into place for a test-fit, then glue and clamp.

For more tenon cutting techniques, check out A.J.’s look at the Festool Domino.

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