First festool cut

[blanning]

I recently ordered a bunch of festools and they've been arriving over the last few days.  Among other things, I put together an mft/3, a ts55, and a ct36 with a dust deputy.  After attaching everything to everything else, I grabbed a couple pieces of birch plywood from home depot.

All I can say is wow!  Having the dust collector start and stop automatically is awesome.  In spite of being an exceptionally lazy person, I never realized how nice that would be.  So I ran the saw through that plywood.  Even cross-cutting the veneer, the cut was perfect.

I pulled out a square and checked it and it wasn't square.  So I flipped it over and put the freshly cut edge up against the fence on the mft, cut about 1/4" off the edge, and measured again.  Now it was perfect.

I have a 1400 I haven't tried yet.  I think later tonight I'll hook that up to the track and try to cut a dado.  I also have a 150/5 and a domino that hasn't arrived yet.  If they perform as well as these have, I think I'm in trouble.

brian

 

[Sparktrician]

Enjoy your penance!!!  (Heh, heh, heh!!!) 

  [big grin]

 

[MTRANGER]

When I got my TS-55, and made my first cut, I was so impressed that I immediatly showed the wife.  She didn't think I was as cool as I thought I was.

My advice for the 1400 is to not get too excite about putting on all of the cool stuff that you forget to tighten your router bit.........like I did.

 

[tiralie]

If they perform as well as these have, I think I'm in trouble.

Ya, you're in trouble. Just wait till you fire up the 150 and do some real sanding...
Tim

 

[semenza]

Good choice on the 150/5. That was my first Festool sander and for a couple years my only sander. It can be a very good all purpose sander with a good selection of abrasives as well as the hard and extra soft pads.

HAVE FUN !!  [smile]

Seth

 

[ccarrolladams]

Blanning, you made some marvelous choices of Festools.

The common challenge when breaking down sheet goods is keeping pieces wider that 24" perfectly square.

In many, many threads on FOG we have discussed the problems.

Since you bought the MFT/3, that will really help make accurate cuts within its range.

So many of us start breaking down full sheets with a clean-up rip as close as practical to one of the long factory edges. Personally I evaluate every sheet and clean-up the worst of the two edges. If you have a Parallel Guide or better the Parallel Guide Extension Set keeping the rips parallel is easier since the maximum capacity is over 25" If you need several narrow strips, you cut from the cleaned-up edge, but you need to think through the job. The maximum capacity of the extension is 7 11/16" (195mm) so you could cut narrow strips using the extension from the cleaned edge. Or, if I need a perfect strip wider than 25" I simply carefully use a 48" ruler, measuring from the cleaned edge and clamping the guide rail, and considering the off-cut to be scrap with one cleaned edge.

Modern plywood is more likely to have the long edges parallel to one another than to have the short edges parallel to each other or square to either long edge. To square a wide piece you need faith in some device. One test, after a long edge is cleaned, is to apply a prospective square to that and using it to position a guide rail. Lightly draw a line along the splinter guard of the guide rail. Then turn the square the other way on the cleaned edge, turn the guide rail around and try to make another line covering the first one. If they do overlap, then that square is true and is to be treated as royalty. If the second line does not overlap, the prospective square is inaccurate and needs to be returned from where it was obtained. Keep testing squares until you find royalty.