DIY Saw Track Update

Hey everybody, I'm Tommy and today I'm going to show you how I made some improvements to my DIY saw track design. Whether it's your first time here or even if you've been here before, welcome to One Minute Workbench. So a few months ago I designed this saw track and people really seemed to like it and people also had some great suggestions on how I might be able to make it better. The main suggestions were number one to use masonite and number two was to add plexiglass to these sight hole locations. Well I bought a new circular saw and I built this track for it and in this video I'm going to show you how I added the plexiglass and why masonite didn't work out. The first thing I noticed with the masonite was that it was very flimsy but I marked the factory edges anyway and cut off a few strips to see if they stayed straight. They were really bad so I decided to check the edges of the wider pieces and they were also not great. I was detecting upwards of 1 32nd of an inch in variation with my feeler gauge so I went back to plywood. This piece of polycarbonate was just a few dollars at Home Depot. I cut four small pieces so I could test different glues. I used sandpaper to rough up two of the pieces. I applied hot glue to a roughed up piece and hot glue to a smooth piece. Then I realized I should label everything so I didn't get them mixed up. After that I applied super glue to a roughed up piece and super glue to a smooth piece and let everything dry for about five minutes. The hot glue held up pretty well but I couldn't tell much difference between the sanded and smooth pieces. The super glue held up incredibly well but again I couldn't tell much difference between the sanded and smooth. I cut out some squares and then traced them over the sight holes on the track. I built this track almost exactly the same way I did the first one so if you haven't seen that video be sure to check it out. I also traced one of the squares on a scrap piece of plywood so I could test the depth of my router bit. I made the cut freehand and tested the square. It was just a bit too deep so I reset the depth and tried again. It was a perfect fit this time so I repeated that process on the actual track. Again I just did these freehand since they didn't need to be exact. You'll also notice that I'm making the corners extra wide. This is so I don't have to square them up with a chisel. I then came back with a chisel and cleaned up any burrs that were present. I removed the protective film and applied the squares to the cutouts with super glue. The super glue dries very fast so I sort of got in a rhythm where I would set weights on the previous square and by the time I applied super glue to the next square it was time to move the weights. I came back and filled in the wide round corners with hot glue just so there would be no chance of cutting my fingers on the sharp corners of the polycarbonate. I tried to squeegee the excess glue while it was still hot. This sort of worked but it took a lot of sanding to smooth it out. On the next one I let the glue set up for a few minutes and then came back and trimmed it with a chisel. It still took some sanding but a lot less. To cut the polycarbonate I lowered the saw into the track and then ran it through all of the pieces. This worked fine and the results were very good. On the last build some people mentioned that since I used a worm drive style circular saw that a direct drive saw's motor might hit the outside rail and limit the depth of cut. You can see here that at least when using half inch plywood and this Dewalt cordless direct drive circular saw the track doesn't interfere with the motor reaching its maximum depth setting. Other than the fact that this track fits a different saw it works pretty much the same exact way as the last one where you use the sight holes to line up the track with your cut line. Again if you haven't seen that video be sure to check it out. Hey thanks for watching I really hope you liked this video. If you haven't already be sure to like and subscribe and make sure you hit the bell icon so you get notified every time there's a new episode. I'd love to hear what you think of these saw tracks in the comment section below and if you have any quick questions you want answered hit me up on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. And until the next time I see you I hope you have fun building something.