Thread: Review Festool Precisio CS 70 tablesaw

Gday all,

I thought I would put my experience "on paper" with the Festool CS 70 as there is not a whole lot out there about this saw. I have had this saw for about 6 months. Let me preface this by saying that prior to this saw I owned a Triton workcentre and subsequently a TSC 10HB which I thought was a fantastic saw for the money. I bought the CS70 as I needed a portable saw as I was in the middle of some renovations. It was an expensive purchase but so are any significant renovations so I figured I'd take the plunge and see how I go.

My first impressions were that everything was well packed, in typical Festool fashion and everything arrived in one piece courtesy of Anthony and his team at idealtools. A trailer full of cardboard later followed by a trip to the tip, the garage was clear and I was ready to set this baby up . The set comes with the saw table, a sliding table, mitre gauge, two extension wings (one to fit to the right of the saw and one as an outfeed table), a fence, a Y hose for use on Festool extractor and a push stick. I will discuss these one at a time.

Saw table:

My first impressions was that this was a well made saw, but certainly not light, I wouldnt want to be tossing this around everyday, I could lift it by myself but wouldn't want to do this often.

The table top is aluminium and part of it can be removed for access to the blade. Being aluminium this is not perfectly flat as a nice machined cast-iron table, as proven by my trusty straight edge. This was disappointing but I expected it. It does not seem to affect cuts though. All around the saw table there is a V channel that the mitre gauge can be attached to and can act as a short fence (if you dont need the full size fence). The full size fence attaches to the front and back of the table. I have noticed that the flip stops supplied with the MFT will also work on the fence of the mitre gauge, this is nice. It also means you could order the fence off the MFT and extend the length of the bar that comes with the mitre gauge.

Unlike a conventional saw this is also a pull saw, there is a round handle that allows you to unlock the saw and pull it towards you. In this mode you fix the mitre gauge and workpiece to the table. This allows for a decent stable cross-cut but it also means no standard mitre channel so an incra mitre gauge cannot be used on this saw. It also means that a lot of jigs are a pain to adapt to this saw. The mitre gauge was not set true from the factory and had to be adjusted (this is very easy to do). Once adjusted I managed to get a close to perfect cross cut on a 450mm melamine sheet... what this means in practice if youre crosscutting smaller solid pieces of timber you dont necessarily need the sliding mitre saw and they are a perfect 90 degree crosscut without a sled. The pull action is notas fluid as I would like, maybe the rails need to be lubricated, I'm not sure.

The saw blade is accessible by lifting a panel of the aluminium table to the left of the blade. This is fixed with a butterfly type fixture. The blade is easy to change using a hex key and the built in spindle lock. The supplied combination blade is excellent, however once again was not set at true 90 degrees (vertical) by Festool. Adjusting it to 90 degrees is theoretically easy but festool has made it more difficult than it needed to be. Instead of a wheel, they use a handle for adjusting blade angle with too coarse gearing to make fine adjustments easy. With a bit of a fiddle the blade was finally at 90 degrees. The degree indicator is very easy to adjust.

The motor is great, quiet, plenty of grunt and with variable speed which helps if you're cutting materials other than timber.

The saw has a riving knife which rises and falls with the blade and can be pushed down but as far as I know is not removable. The blade guard I found not so great, at times catching on a piece of timber unless locked above the height of the timber you're cutting, not a smooth as the TSC 10HB.


The sliding table:

The sliding table on this saw is good but not perfect and had to be adjusted to get it close to perfect. Possible adjustments are many and poorly illustrated in the manual. I find most Festool manuals lacking, they rarely do justice to the tools. Essentially however there are enough adjustments possible that you end up with a pretty good result. Again this is not a panel saw but much better than the average mitre saw with a larger cut possible. Once the sliding table is setup its very easy to remove and reinstall in the exact same position. This is a bonus if you have to put the saw away so SWMBO can park the car in your man-cave (in my case SWMBO has been banned from the garage ). The sliding table makes making tenons very quick and easy.


Extension wings:

Not much to say here apart from the fact that they are easily adjustable. The one to the right of the blade extends the table to a good 650mm. The extension to the measuring rule for ripping cuts is easy to adjust to perfect. I have had to shave a tiny bit off the extension rule to get it to adjust to perfect. Its remained spot on ever since.


The Fence:

This is made from aluminium extrusion and there is an extrusion fitted to the fence that can be used vertically or horizontally for ripping different materials. The fence is fixed to the v channel and also the back of the table. Its important to make sure the V groove is clean before securing the fence. The fence has a micrometer built in where you can dial up in increments of 0.1mm. Fixing it to the table involves tightening a round knob and a level. Once fixed it is solid, no movement at all, although using my engineering square I noticed there a tiny amount of flex notable, again this is so minimal it doesnt affect the cuts which are perfect 90 degrees. Not as nice the fence on the TSC 10Hb but pretty good. The thing I dont like about it the most is having to register measurements off the edge of a fence rather than a line with with a magnifying loupe, this does annoy me.


Dust extraction:

The supplied Y hose fits is straight into most Festool vacs and does a reasonable job of dust extraction, certainly must better than a triton or a typical cabinet saw but its not perfect. There is still some dust generated with cuts.



In summary, I think this a good saw which offers a reasonable degree of accuracy in a portable (only just) package. For this sort of money it should have been spot on accurate out of the box, which it wasn't. This is disappointing, the TSC 10HB was more accurate off the pallet than this saw. Nevertheless once its set-up it stays that way which has not been my experience with previous portable saws.

Its price point means that its not going to be the saw of choice for someone who is happy with a fixed saw that will live in the workshop. The TSC 10HB is a much better fixed saw at half the price. This saw is ideal for someone who needs portability, good dust extraction and something more than the various offerings from Makita, Bosch, etc.

I hope this is of help to anyone considering purchasing this saw in the future.