Festools in the wild: can I see in operation in So. CA?

[John Lloyd]

Two questions for FOG members from an old hand needing new tools:

    1) Anybody near Fullerton in Southern CA using Festools, willing to let me hover in their shop for an hour and kibitz while they?re working?

        Sp. interested in MFT/TS combo and Domino, but would appreciate first-hand evidence of performance vs. cost.

        I?ll bring the Starbucks and bran muffins.

    2) If I were to buy Festool line, any suggestions on selecting vendor?

        All vendors appear to charge equal prices, offer equal warranties, and claim superior customer service. They all look beige to me, one of the downsides of resale price maintenance schemes. 

Backstory: Tore down a 1924 farmhouse to dirt and am rebuilding in period-accurate style, meaning lots of flooring, built-ins, and trim. At drywall stage now.

Late August, house and garage were diligently burglarized while a trash container blocked public view. Insurance company stepped right up ? thanks, Horace Mann Insurance! ? and am now seeking replacement tools incl. saws (SCMS, circular, jig, recip, cutout), routers, drills, grinder, sanders, biscuit joiner, pneumatic nailers, laser level, etc.

Heavy iron was left behind with minor damage. Am getting tired, though, of inverting the PM 66 and sliding it around the house to cut access holes in the plywood subfloor.

Hoping Festool can form the basis of a time-efficient and resource-efficient way forward. Thanks for the resource you-all provide. Jerry Work is brilliant.

Cordially, John

 

[Eli]

Man, I missed out on bran muffins.....

Couple guys from here are down in San Diego.

Welcome. Sounds like you're a likely candidate. A lot of really good reviews and questions answered here. I'm going to check out some stabila rotary laser levels, I'll let you know what they're like.

 

[semenza]

Heavy iron was left behind with minor damage. Am getting tired, though, of inverting the PM 66 and sliding it around the house to cut access holes in the plywood subfloor.

Cordially, John

        Now thats funny

    John, (welcome)

          It sounds to me that the Festool line is exactly the right fit for what you are doing.

Seth

 

[Jerry Work]

Welcome to the group, John.  Thanks for the comment but my wife would probably challenge your flattering assertion.......

Jerry

Two questions for FOG members from an old hand needing new tools:

     1) Anybody near Fullerton in Southern CA using Festools, willing to let me hover in their shop for an hour and kibitz while they?re working?

         Sp. interested in MFT/TS combo and Domino, but would appreciate first-hand evidence of performance vs. cost.

         I?ll bring the Starbucks and bran muffins.

     2) If I were to buy Festool line, any suggestions on selecting vendor?

         All vendors appear to charge equal prices, offer equal warranties, and claim superior customer service. They all look beige to me, one of the downsides of resale price maintenance schemes. 

Backstory: Tore down a 1924 farmhouse to dirt and am rebuilding in period-accurate style, meaning lots of flooring, built-ins, and trim. At drywall stage now.

Late August, house and garage were diligently burglarized while a trash container blocked public view. Insurance company stepped right up ? thanks, Horace Mann Insurance! ? and am now seeking replacement tools incl. saws (SCMS, circular, jig, recip, cutout), routers, drills, grinder, sanders, biscuit joiner, pneumatic nailers, laser level, etc.

Heavy iron was left behind with minor damage. Am getting tired, though, of inverting the PM 66 and sliding it around the house to cut access holes in the plywood subfloor.

Hoping Festool can form the basis of a  and resource-efficient way forward. Thanks for the resource you-all provide. Jerry Work is brilliant.

Cordially, John

 

[Administrator_JSVN]

John,

Welcome to the group!  I think you will find FOG to be an invaluable resource with many extremely talented and experienced professionals.  I wanted to let you (and the rest of the group) know that we maintain a list of open houses on our website athttp://www.festoolusa.com/open_houses.aspx.  You can also view a list of Festool dealers in California on this page:http://www.festoolusa.com/find_dealer_detail.aspx?state=CA&statename=CALIFORNIA.

Note that there are several open houses in the San Fran area over the coming weeks.  Good luck!

Shane

 

[Toolpig]

I'm not a "pro" builder, but am renovating my second house so take this with a grain of salt.

For framing or general rough-cutting, go with a Bosch or RIDGID worm drive.  Best damned circ saws I've ever used (I used to be a "sidewinder" guy but am now a total convert).

For woodworking & trimwork, the TS55 plunge cut saw with a few different length guide rails will change your life -- with or without the vacuum, though I highly recommend it!  I also have several of the sanders and will probably never buy another brand of sander -- silky smooth surfaces and no dust.  I didn't buy the Festool jigsaw, however, because I fell in love with the new Bosch 1591 barrel grip.  People here will also tell you to get the "MFT," but for most work I get along just fine with a hollow-core door propped on a couple of sawhorses. 

TP

Two questions for FOG members from an old hand needing new tools:

     1) Anybody near Fullerton in Southern CA using Festools, willing to let me hover in their shop for an hour and kibitz while they?re working?

         Sp. interested in MFT/TS combo and Domino, but would appreciate first-hand evidence of performance vs. cost.

         I?ll bring the Starbucks and bran muffins.

     2) If I were to buy Festool line, any suggestions on selecting vendor?

         All vendors appear to charge equal prices, offer equal warranties, and claim superior customer service. They all look beige to me, one of the downsides of resale price maintenance schemes. 

Backstory: Tore down a 1924 farmhouse to dirt and am rebuilding in period-accurate style, meaning lots of flooring, built-ins, and trim. At drywall stage now.

Late August, house and garage were diligently burglarized while a trash container blocked public view. Insurance company stepped right up ? thanks, Horace Mann Insurance! ? and am now seeking replacement tools incl. saws (SCMS, circular, jig, recip, cutout), routers, drills, grinder, sanders, biscuit joiner, pneumatic nailers, laser level, etc.

Heavy iron was left behind with minor damage. Am getting tired, though, of inverting the PM 66 and sliding it around the house to cut access holes in the plywood subfloor.

Hoping Festool can form the basis of a time-efficient and resource-efficient way forward. Thanks for the resource you-all provide. Jerry Work is brilliant.

Cordially, John

 

[Scott Larson]

John,

There is a very active Festoolie that I believe has his workspace very close to Austin Hardwoods in Orange/Santa Ana (Just a few blocks away from the store).  He is hard-core enough that I was told he painted his unisaw Black and green.  He is well known by many of the Austin Hardwood folks so it might be worth calling them and seeing if they will give you his name.  Since he is a professional and I believe uses Festool as his primary workflow, he would be well worth visiting if he was open to it.

-Scott

 

[Tinker]

I am not a carpenter, but have spent many years in construction as a mason contractor.  I have always messed around with carpentry and have done a lot of framing and finish work on my own and friends houses..  I have always used Circular saws with two x as guide for making long cuts.  Circular saw with a large speed square for cross cutting.  Since getting the MFT 1080 and ATF 55, I have not used the old Milwaukee more than 3 or 4 times.  I did try cutting on site with the ATF without the guide bar and was not happy.  I had a problem with lining up exact until i decided it was go inside for either guide bar or Milwaukee and speedsquare.  I found that for general cross cutting, it was much quicker (only a few cuts) setting up with the Milwaukee/speedsquare.  It was quicker with the ATF/MFT if i was making a lot of cuts as I set up several boards on the table, knocked them into square allignment, dropped the installed guide bar onto the lined up lumber and make the cut.

Since getting the MFT/ATF combo, I would not go to any job without them.  I do not use the Milwaukee unless i am only making a very few cuts.  For cutting sheet lumber, there is no comparrison.  With the old Milwaukee/1x or 2x guide method, i always made my cuts at the tailgate of my truck and made then 1" oversize and then moved the pile to my TS.  I now make my marks at the truck and cut exact.  No more recutting other than special milling such as routing if necessary.

I have been away from construction for 25 years now and have never seen anybody using Festool system on site.  there are several very competant mechanics here of the FOG who are professionals.  If you wander around here, you will see some great projects done of site with Festools. 
Tinker 

 

[John Lloyd]

Thanks to all for the advice and welcome received here, incl. PM's.

Scott, I'll ask Austin Hardwoods today about their Festool customer. Great lead. Austin Hardwoods sourced 1300 bd ft walnut planks for the farmhouse's front rooms, so we have some history.

Shane, I appreciate your suggestion of attending vendors' open houses in the Bay Area, but my whole point was to visit with a real-world worker meeting real-world challenges using banged-up Festools. We've all seen a salesman's controlled demo using shiny new tools. Different venue for a different purpose.

Choosing among Festool dealers is still a puzzle. Selection criteria aren't obvious to an outsider like me when dealers are not differentiable over model, price, warranty or service.

I want a dealer to listen and tell me up or down, "Look, you total moron, there's a wide gap -- not the narrow niche you?ve been presuming -- between Festools and your legacy tools, given what you need to do and the way you're doing it."

Tinker and Toolpig prove that actionable, down-home assessments are available from Festool USERS (absent the total moron comment only because they don?t know me). So is there an analogous Festool DEALER?

How did you choose your Festool dealer?

Thanks to insurance, I'm long on cash and short on tools, and need to reverse that situation soon. Again, thanks for the valuable responses all have provided.

 

[TomCrawford]

Well, since you have not had a response for someone to visit is Southern California maybe you can take a few days come to southwest Oregon.  I would be happy to have you vist to discuss 'in the wild' Festool use or even better, Jerry Work lives about 8 miles from me and I expect he would be pleased to talk with you. We are just over the Oregon border, 60 miles from the Crescent City, Ca and 25 mile off highway 5, southwest of Grants Pass, Or.

Tom Crawford
Selma, Or

 

[Tinker]

Sorry John, I can't help you on the West Coast, but if you are willing to talk with somebody who is willing to help and generally a great person to deal with, try Bob M. here on the FOG.  I talked with him when he was a little closer to having just started as a dealer.  I was interrested in a certain toy that he had on hand but had no hands on experience at the time.  He was perfectly honest in the appraisal of his experience.  Of course he wanted the sale, but was willing to take his lumps if i needed the hands on info.  I don't think you can find more honesty than that.  He has also, when the two uf us had a little mixup in communications, offered to deliver another toy dirrect to my home.  I think it would have been a four hour round trip.  I told him I was not in that great a hurry, but he's willing to bend a whole lot.
I have no experience with the other dealers who frequent the FOG but you can check them out.  Look for the green letters of their names
Tinker

 

[John Lloyd]

I've heard of you, Tom. You and Jerry teach that class in Survival Furniture 101: using only a found rock, hammer a section of rebar into the necessary tools to fell and dimension a tree into a cut list for a complete late-17th century salon. I'm still stuck on "find a rock" but am willing to learn.

Thank you for your kind offer to visit. There's a non-profit called The Rebuilding Center in Portland I could check out for old-growth clear, vertical grain Douglas fir flooring to replace the farmhouse's original. If I were ever in the area, I'd call ahead and bring the promised Starbucks and bran muffins.

FOG members have been generous with their recommendations via PM, to Festool-equipped shops and to dealers. I'll follow up on 2 shops. On dealers, folks say  that choosing a dealer is subjective to each user. There's a growing consensus around a couple dealers, though, so more than subjective preference is at work.

I'm open-minded about changing my methods yet it's a stretch to think the AT-75 and MFT are complementary (or "revolutionary"), and not redundant, to current SCMS and table saw.

 

[TomCrawford]

Actually I'm just the gofer and the one that peddles the the bike that powers the cyclone dust collector.

Tom

 

[Eli]

the bike that powers the cyclone dust collector.

For some reason that gives me the visual of you with Toto in the front basket. "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home......."

 

[Dave Rudy]

it's a stretch to think the AT-75 and MFT are complementary (or "revolutionary"), and not redundant, to current SCMS and table saw.

With all due respect John, it's a stretch because you're thinking about and not using the tools.  You were right on -- you do need to actually work with them. 

I still have and use a tablesaw (some of the folks here have abandoned theirs) for certain things -- but it is becoming infrequent and even rare.  When I can use the TS 55 instead of a jointer, it makes the tablesaw redundant for most tasks (not to mention risk of injury, noise and dust collection).  Like the commercial said: 
"try it, you'll like it"

Dave

 

[Dave Ronyak]

I bought a table saw just about the time I started buying Festool, moving up from a Shopsmith.  I recently made a pair of hanging cabinets for my shop from plywood.  I used Festool to cut the panels from the 4x8 sheets, but when I later needed to trim some of them to a narrower width to use as internal shelves, I used my TS.  Why - one fence setting and 4 panels pushed through, very fast and absolutely consistent.  I also used my table saw in a sense when cutting grooves (dados) in the plywood panels to capture a piece of pegboard for the back of one cabinet and 1/2" plywood for the back of the other cabinet.  I have a router table in the left extension of my table saw, and once again, a simple adjustment of the table saw fence and the router (which I would have had to do with a Festool router, too) and simply pushing the pieces of the cabinet boxes through the router table and I was done, and once again, absolutely consistent from panel to panel, referencing the front edges of the cabinet box panels off the fence of the table saw.  So I am still a believer in using both types of tools, if you have them.

Dave R.

 

[John Lloyd]

Both Daves provide useful comment. I line up more with Senor Ronyak.

I know I'm overthinking purchase. I'll see the tools in real use shortly and that will sort my issues.

Festools have been marketed in USA for 10+ years and the evidence is in: Festools do not deliver marginal return above their way-more than marginal cost, for the vast majority of USA tool buyers. That's why I thought it would be a stretch to presume I'm in the end-of-the-bell-curve minority for whom that last 5% performance is worth five times the price of the next-best product, especially when my PM 66 and Makita SCMS arguably put a dent in that last 5%.

So, again, I'm a Festool agnostic. More product knowledge and hands-on experience might provide a revelatory moment, which is why I'm on the forum and (soon) in some friendly stranger's shop. But it?s neither ignorance nor naivete that keeps me from buying one of everything now.

What an interesting choice Festool made in opening a distribution channel though Rockler, per Rockler's latest flyer.

 

[Dave Rudy]

Festools have been marketed in USA for 10+ years and the evidence is in: Festools do not deliver marginal return above their way-more than marginal cost, for the vast majority of USA tool buyers.

SOAPBOX !!!!!

I agree with the observation John.  The question is, are the vast majority of USA tool buyers the standard?  Leaving aside bad judgment and brand identification/advertising driving purchasing decisions, included in the list of USA tool buyers are weekend DIY'rs, people who once in a great while need to cut something, people who only shop for power tools at Sears (not knocking them, just observing), and, of course, serious amateurs and professionals, among many other groups.  How do you rate their "collective wisdom"?

Festool is clearly not for everyone.  You have to be willing and able to pay for them, for example.  And for some purposes, you just don't need their precision (although they bring a joy to even the most mundane sanding job).  The initial reaction to Festool for many people is that some European company is trying to rip them off by selling them a saw at three times the price they can get from good old black & decker, porter-cable, dewalt or sears.  After all, what is a saw but a motor that spins a blade?

People use the same logic to justify buying a Neon (do they still make those?) instead of a Cadillac.  Both will get you from point a to point b.  In reasonable comfort.  Safety -- may be an issue or two there, but I don't plan on getting into an accident on the way, right?  Advanced stereo, heated seats, headlight washers?????? Come on!  So buy the Neon.

There is perfectly good logic there.  And it works for many (most) people.  There are a couple of problems though.  One is that the Neon buyer typically never drives a Cadillac.  He has no idea what that experience is like.  If he's smart, he won't drive a Cadillac -- it might well change his purchasing decision and encourage him to buy something he doesn't need and can't afford.  So he is not capable of making the same choice that I may be about to make.

The second problem is that once he buys the Neon, he will defend his purchase.  He will talk about how much he loves the car (typically) and what a good decision he made (This problem affects Festoolians as well as others).  But unless he has actually tried all the other cars, his opinion, biased as it is in favor of defending a purchasing decision, is not worth all that much.

Do you trust the average American consumer enough to let the "normal" choice become yours?

One more point -- I have found with tools over many years that when I buy the cheap one, I always end up buying an average of let's say three of them.  With Festools, you buy only one.  The math actually works out over time.

The reason, IMHO, that Festool gives a 30-day money back guarantee is that almost everyone who test drives a Festool ends up buying one.  Go figure.

OFF SOAPBOX

 

[Eli]

One more point -- I have found with tools over many years that when I buy the cheap one, I always end up buying an average of let's say three of them.  With Festools, you buy only one.  The math actually works out over time.

I second (and third  ;D ) this.

The reason, IMHO, that Festool gives a 30-day money back guarantee is that almost everyone who test drives a Festool ends up buying one.  Go figure.

the same thing Tempur-pedic does, it's how I convinced my wife to give one a try. We fell asleep for four hours on the new mattress the day it was delivered, and when she woke up, her mind was made up.