Home made MFT help, am I out of my mind?

[StevoWevo]

Guys I have been working on a smallish work surface to use in my little spare bedroom work space. I’m thinking about routing in some incra t-track+ And possibly some miter channel. Reason being, so I can slide a fence from the rear of the table forward. Also another fence to slide sideways on the right of the guide rail for off-cutting.
My thought was this arrangement would keep the cut lines in two general areas where I could replace small strips of the top and extend the life of the surface and keep cuts away from the dog holes.
So am I nuts? Over complicating things?  I’v got zero experience trying to build one of these so any advice or criticism is welcome. Thanks

 

[DiscoStu]

I have one fence on my MDT table and I use bench dogs in the same holes so my cut line is always the same. My biggest fear is that I’ll forget to set the depth correctly and cut through the entire top one day but so far it’s been perfect and just the one cut line. It must has stayed true as well because the cut line is only the blade kerf thick even though it’s done hundreds of cuts so there’s been no need to replace the channel. Anything other than 90 degrees then I cut off of the MFT type top.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[StevoWevo]

Thanks DiscoStu, what about longer rips? Is most everyone just using parallel guides to break sheets down to more manageable sizes. FWIW my table is 33x68 without any extrusion on the perimeter yet. That’s a whole other matter

 

[Michael Kellough]

Thanks DiscoStu, what about longer rips? Is most everyone just using parallel guides to break sheets down to more manageable sizes. FWIW my table is 33x68 without any extrusion on the perimeter yet. That’s a whole other matter

Back in the day, before parallel guides, people used measuring sticks of one sort or another. If the distance wasn’t too much a combination square worked best.

Get the rail fairly evenly set, set one end exactly on the. mark via the comb. square, (set to the left side of the rail) park the saw as close to that position as is safe to hold the rail from moving, then set the other end. Quickly double check the positions with the comb. square and make the cut.

When Festool finally released the parallel guide set people were disappointed that it was so heavy and awkward. Partly it’s the nature of the tools and all of them can be described that way to varying extent.

The biggest game changer to cutting down sheet goods since the track saw/guide rail was invented is the TSO rail square. Assuming you start with a freshly straightened long edge, using the rail square eliminates most of the concern about parallel cuts.

 

[StevoWevo]

Dam, by the time I get all the accessories I could of just bought a 9’ slider