Veritas Power Tool Guide — and the Track Guide You Can Buy on Amazon

The Veritas straight-edge and power tool guide system is one of Lee Valley’s own designs: an extruded aluminium straight edge with clamping heads, sold with accessories that let a circular saw or a router run along it. Like everything under the Veritas name it is sold direct through leevalley.com and is not stocked on Amazon.

It is a good system and worth ordering if that is what you want. The rest of this page covers the alternative you can buy today, because the problem it solves — a straight cut in a sheet of plywood without a table saw — is one almost every home shop has.

How the Accu-Cut differs

The Veritas approach is a straight edge you run the saw’s baseplate against. The Kreg Accu-Cut is a track with a carriage: the saw bolts to a sled that captures onto the rail, so the saw cannot drift off the guide even if your feed pressure is uneven. For anyone who has ever had a circular saw wander away from a straight edge mid-cut, that difference is the point.

The track lays on the sheet and grips through anti-slip strips rather than clamps. On a full sheet of ply, being able to place the track, eyeball the line and cut without wrestling two clamps is what makes it a one-person job. Cut length is up to 50 in, and a second track section extends it to handle the long dimension.

The honest limits

It is extruded aluminium and moulded plastic. It is accurate, and it is not a Festool rail. It flexes under downward pressure, so let the saw do the work and keep your weight off the track.

The carriage has to be fitted to your saw and squared, and that is the step that determines cut quality. Do it carefully once and check it with a test cut before the sheet you care about.

Finally, this is a guide, not a track saw. There is no plunge action, no riving knife, and the cut quality on the underside depends entirely on the blade you fit. A 40-tooth or higher blade makes a bigger difference here than anything else you can change.