Mitre saw or table saw for flooring and skirting

What’s best / will make my life easiest? I have space for a table saw.

Mitre saw all the way for me – been ‘working’ on our house for the last few years; kitchen, umpteen amounts of flooring, skirting and so on. Just sold my table saw after it’d spent the majority of the time covered in a sheet in the workshop. Mitre saw is used all the time.

If I were doing more cross-cutting and had money to spare I’d buy a decent slide rail saw / track saw system..

Sliding mitre saw with an appropriate blade?
It’s what I use for everything.

Something like this..
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Makita-LS0815FL-240-Slide-Compound-Mitre/dp/B00KL8K3V2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1505763248&sr=8-2&keywords=makita+mitre+saw

Makita sliding mitre
Nothing better

Compound mitre saw plus get some bevels to measure corner angles as you’ll find quite a few aren’t 90 degrees.

I have space for a table saw.

Remember that for “space for table saw” what you actually needed to be space either side of the saw. If you want to run an 8ft board through a saw you need a length of a board in front of and behind the saw plus room for someone each end holding it – so ‘room for a table saw’ is actually about 20ft 🙂

Generally speaking with timber (rather than sheet material) a table saw is really for cutting along the length of the wood (cross cutting is possible but its difficult to support anything longer than 2 of 3ft long on most table saws) and crosscut saws can only cut across the wood. So for skirting you’d want to use a mitre saw. For flooring you’d mostly use a mitre saw for cutting to length – at the edges of the floor you’d want to cut along the board for fit but theres relatively few of those cuts and you’d get on fine with a hand held circular saw.

A ‘best of both’ would be a flip over saw like the Dewalt / Elu one – they’re a little bit of a compromise in both functions though

Makita sliding mitre
Nothing better

Theres at least one thats a bit better 🙂

I think a mitre saw/compound mitre saw for cross cuts and a circular/track saw for ripping and cutting large sheet material is a better option than a table saw.

I think a mitre saw/compound mitre saw for cross cuts and a circular/track saw for ripping and cutting large sheet material is a better option than a table saw.

Indeed – track saws are more space efficient (you only need the footprint of the board rather than 2x the footprint of the board as room to work) Tracksaws work better with larger sheets, counter intuitively table saws are better for small work – once you get down to small sizes its difficult to support and secure the wood you’re cutting with and handheld saw but you can do really dinky work on a table saw.

I’d say for house-scale work like floors you’re better with a track saw – table saws are more for bench top projects – furniture scale work.

Makita sliding mitre
Nothing better

Festool Kapex

dovebiker – Member
Compound mitre saw plus get some bevels to measure corner angles as you’ll find quite a few aren’t 90 degrees.

This Trend angle finder is the shizz. Wang it around an angle and the metal bit in the middle automatically splits the angle. Align your blade with it and boom… Perfect mitres and shit.

I’ve got a 165mm Makita sliding mitre saw. It’s fantastic.

I’m not a Festool fan personally. I think they’re different for the sake of it and don’t seem to be better than equivalent models from other brands while at the same time being crazy expensive.
The fact they decided to put the handle on their power tool boxes on the wide face instead of the edge is enough to make me boycott them.
The one Festool tool we have at work, I fitted my own handle on the edge where any sensible company would normally put it 😀

I’m very partial to Makita stuff having treated myself to a few lxt bits and bobs when I moved in. I have a circular saw and a jigsaw already, though the circular saw has remained unused as everything I’ve done so far has been small stuff so either the jigsaw or my multi tool with a saw blade has been sufficient

Think you have sufficiently put me off a table saw, the plan was to use it outside under the porch. I have a sliding bezel but that trend angle finder looks worth a purchase.

Follow up question, do I need a nailer / brader? They seem to be very expensive over my discretionary spend limits for tools….could I get away with a decent Makita stapler?

This Trend angle finder is the shizz.

You get one built into the Festool Kapex 🙂

You scribe skirting, not mitre

footflaps – Member
This Trend angle finder is the shizz.
You get one built into the Festool Kapex

For the price of it I should blummin think so! 😯

psychobiker – Member
You scribe skirting, not mitre

On external corners?

Follow up question, do I need a nailer / brader? They seem to be very expensive over my discretionary spend limits for tools….could I get away with a decent Makita stapler?

Hire a paslode for about £40 a weekend to £70 a week.

I’ve looked at hiring, I’d rather own as with two young kids I get to do small bits of jobs regularly rather than have a whole week to have a crack at stuff, so I’m going to be doing stuff for many many years.

Follow up question, do I need a nailer / brader? They seem to be very expensive over my discretionary spend limits for tools….could I get away with a decent Makita stapler?

What makita stapler are you referring to?

Framing nailers (the kind of thing you make roofs / stud walls / horror movies with) there aren’t really any cheap options for.

Finish nailers (16 gauge and 18 gauge) can be more affordable, – they’re the sort of thing you’d attach facing and skirtings with – especially into stud walls (they wouldn’t tackle masonry) – cheapest are air powered ones will run off a dinky cheap compressor and you can usually get nailer/compressor bundled together. Air staplers have their uses – mostly for fitting very thing material that a brad would just shoot straight through, but in most household uses a brad nailer would be more use – the problem with staples is they make a bigger dent /bruise in the wood for you to fill where as brads are very discrete. You can get combined brad / staple guns but they still make a staple-sized dent when you use a brad.

18 gauge nails are the thinest and most easy to hide/fill but I find that they’re so thin they can be prone to bending/jamming/miss-firing so I prefer to use 16 gauge instead.

As I say – air powered are cheapest and even the very cheapest non-brand ones are still perfectly good.

Cordless ones by the likes of Dewalt/Bosch/ Senco are good but expensive – more affordable if you already have a matching charger/battery though

Gas powered ones (paslode etc) get expensive over time as the gas/nail packs are pricy.

Mains powered ones tend to be cheap – but the one I used (takwise) just seemed to lack the necessary oomph compared to any of the other options.

Aside from trim work brad nailers can be a sort of useful third hand – you can just hold one piece of wood in front of another and fire a brad through and its held much more easily than it would be with a screw / hammer and nail – you can then follow that up with a more structural fixing. A few brads are good for holding glued materials together if you don’t have oodles of clamps too.

Thanks for the advice, really useful, I’d been looking at http://www.powertoolworld.co.uk/makita-dst112z-lxt-18v-li-ion-cordless-10mm-stapler-body-only but reckon it wouldn’t be up for the job. I seem to have a mixture of walls, some solid and some a pretty thin plaster layer presumably a lathe and plaster type. Previous non orignal work seems to have been someone using wood screws and then filling and painting over. Massive pita to remove.

The other option I have is to undercut the original trim which might be simpler with a bit of patience

What about something like this and a wee compressor to match.

http://www.axminster.co.uk/axminster-air-aw50n-18g-brad-nailer-340382

Or 16g version taking on board advice above.

http://www.axminster.co.uk/axminster-air-t50p-16g-brad-nailer-953415

I’d been looking at

As far as I can work out they’re not much different to a standard manual staple gun – seems to be a proprietory staple that nobody sells too. I’ve never really grasped what the application for them is supposed to be. Mainly because I’ve never seen the staoles.

The ones you’d use for finish joinery would be ‘narrow crown’ staples – up to 40mm long. Usually the staple type is a ‘type 90’

I’ve got a £30 Titan electric 18g brad gun from Screwfix.

For the money it’s actually brilliant. Did a load of T&G in the bathroom with it.

Obviously not for flooring though.

Follow up question, do I need a nailer / brader? They seem to be very expensive over my discretionary spend limits for tools….could I get away with a decent Makita stapler?

They’re really handy things to have.

I lucked out and found a used Makita compressor, brad nailer and framing nailer on ebay recently. The brad nailer is so much better than my old Takwise electric nailer / stapler. Used the previous one to make up picture frames etc and it was a bugger for jamming etc. Just working through boarding out and T&G our garden studio/shed thing and the Makita is amazing- much better at not leaving dents in softwood – I have put about 1000 brads through it without a single jam.

The framing nailer scares the bejesus out of me. It’ll put a mahoosive 60mm+ nail into solid wood without blinking.

If you’re local to me (East Sussex), you’re more than welcome to borrow it…

If your likely to be doing stuff for years then I’d avoid nailers in general and try to generally work with “I’ll probably pull this off next year”
It’s a bit hawkish but I’ve got away with a few panel pins and glue on skirting that’s lasted long enough until I’ve had to pull it off to do something else. Then you don’t end up with big dents and holes…

Thanks for the loan offer sadly I’m a little too far (soton)

Would that cheap titan job have enough omphf for skirting into masonry? It’s about 10% cost of the makita version

It’s not the oomph it’s the nail. Finish nails (16ga and 18ga) are really just bits of wire. They’ll crumple when they hit masonry.

Masonry nails and masonry nailers are a pretty specific spec