Orders@ruok.com
Member
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2013
- Messages
- 7
How I created my own MFT style workbench top
A couple of years ago a riend and I decided to build a couple of dinghies in my workshop. We built the first one on a sheet of 1/4" pegboard sitting on a couple of saw horses When that collapsed on me, I decided to step it up a bit. I had a 4'x8' foot sheet of one inch thick baltic birch plywood laying around that I had purchased several years ago for a project that I never built. I added a bunch of 2x cedar lubmber and built a nice, sturdy, but heavy workbench and then built the second dinghy.
Due to the weight of the table I then added some heavy duty lockable castors. Then I added a cou;le of sets of Kreg Klamp Vises to the edge of the bench which I made moveable adding 1/4' threaded inserts all along the edge of the bench.
I still had one problem with the bench - surface clamping. Sometime later, while surfing YouTube for Festool power tools (I own several)I came across the festool clamps for the MFT and also the qwas dog products. I thought that they would be a great solution for my surface clamping problems.
I started researching the web as to hole size and spacing of the MFT. I came up with 20mm and 96mm respectively. I decided to take the leap. I ordered a 20mm German brad point drill and a 20mm forstner bit from Amazon.com.
Now that I had the tools, I needed to figure out out how to effeciently and accurately drill the holes.
I started out by making a jig. I started out with a squared up piece of 1/2" MDF cut to 48"x10". I carefully layed out a row of holes a couple inches from the bottom of the long end using an electronic caliper to meassure out the 96mm hole centers and then center punched them. 96mm above the holes at each end of the jig I marked out two more 96mm centers to be used for indexing pins. I then, after rechecking my layout, drilled all the holes using a 20mm forstner bit.
[attachimg=1]
[attachimg=2]
Now to actually drill the holes in the bench. I chucked the 20mm brad poing drill bit into a vetical alignment jig, attached a corded drill motor, squared the jig to the bench top and started drilling holes (244) using a 20mm hex bold as an indexing pin. I checked the finished bench top and everything measured out to acceptable tolerances.
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=4]
Now I ordered a variety of Festool MFT clamps and qwas dog accessories and anxiously awaited their arrival.
When the qwas dogs arrived I immediately tried them out on my bench - and found they would not fit! It would have taken a mallet to get them in and out of the holes. Disappointed, I contacted Steve Adams from qwas dogs to find out what was wrong and what I should do at this point. This is where I learned that a 20mm bit is not actually 20mm - very annoying. He gave me three possible solutions (not counting a refund):
1. Try to find a metal working (normal) drill bit that is 20 mm. You might try a 25/32" drill bit but it is border line at .781". At least it might be less sanding. These drill bits won't be cheap.
2. Try to find a 20 mm reamer. A reamer is a precision drill bit that (normally) has straight flutes. The holes needs to be within 1/32" of the reamer size (which you are) and you want to run the reamer at 1/2 the speed of a drill bit but move it in and out faster. Again, it won't be cheap.
3. Back to sanding. As I recall, a larger dowel rod made the job faster so you may want to experiment with that some. You also use coarser sandpaper, might even try 60 or 80 grit and see what happens. The dowel and sandpaper mimic what they call a "Flap Wheel". You can do a Google search and see what you can up with.
I tried the sanding option out first, but with the 1" baltic birch hardwood it was taking over 5 minutes to do a hole. I may be retired, but that amount of time did not seem worth it.
I next tried the hardware approach. I searched amazon.com for bits and reamers. Steve was right they were expensive (up to $600.00), but I eventually found a 20mm (.7874") spiral cut chuckable reamer for $49.00. (The manufacture did not recommend straight flutes for this application) Now the waiting game again.
When the reamer arrived I immediately went to the shop and grabbed a drill motor, ready to go to work. Not a chance - the reamer was too large for a 1/2" drill chuck. I started calling rental places for a drill motor that had a 3/4" inch chuck but came up empty.
While trying to figure out what my next step was going to be, I noticed the the reamer was EXTREMELY sharp, so, with nothing to lose, I clamped the reamer into a vice grip stuck the end of the reamer into the top of one of my holes and careful to hold the reamer as true to vertical as possible, worked the vice grip handle like a ratchet wrench. In less than 5 seconds I was was through the hole. Amazed, I continued on, and in less than two hours I had completed all 244 holes and the qwas dogs fit in them like gloves.
[attachimg=5]
Any questions - feel free to contact me.
A couple of years ago a riend and I decided to build a couple of dinghies in my workshop. We built the first one on a sheet of 1/4" pegboard sitting on a couple of saw horses When that collapsed on me, I decided to step it up a bit. I had a 4'x8' foot sheet of one inch thick baltic birch plywood laying around that I had purchased several years ago for a project that I never built. I added a bunch of 2x cedar lubmber and built a nice, sturdy, but heavy workbench and then built the second dinghy.
Due to the weight of the table I then added some heavy duty lockable castors. Then I added a cou;le of sets of Kreg Klamp Vises to the edge of the bench which I made moveable adding 1/4' threaded inserts all along the edge of the bench.
I still had one problem with the bench - surface clamping. Sometime later, while surfing YouTube for Festool power tools (I own several)I came across the festool clamps for the MFT and also the qwas dog products. I thought that they would be a great solution for my surface clamping problems.
I started researching the web as to hole size and spacing of the MFT. I came up with 20mm and 96mm respectively. I decided to take the leap. I ordered a 20mm German brad point drill and a 20mm forstner bit from Amazon.com.
Now that I had the tools, I needed to figure out out how to effeciently and accurately drill the holes.
I started out by making a jig. I started out with a squared up piece of 1/2" MDF cut to 48"x10". I carefully layed out a row of holes a couple inches from the bottom of the long end using an electronic caliper to meassure out the 96mm hole centers and then center punched them. 96mm above the holes at each end of the jig I marked out two more 96mm centers to be used for indexing pins. I then, after rechecking my layout, drilled all the holes using a 20mm forstner bit.
[attachimg=1]
[attachimg=2]
Now to actually drill the holes in the bench. I chucked the 20mm brad poing drill bit into a vetical alignment jig, attached a corded drill motor, squared the jig to the bench top and started drilling holes (244) using a 20mm hex bold as an indexing pin. I checked the finished bench top and everything measured out to acceptable tolerances.
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=4]
Now I ordered a variety of Festool MFT clamps and qwas dog accessories and anxiously awaited their arrival.
When the qwas dogs arrived I immediately tried them out on my bench - and found they would not fit! It would have taken a mallet to get them in and out of the holes. Disappointed, I contacted Steve Adams from qwas dogs to find out what was wrong and what I should do at this point. This is where I learned that a 20mm bit is not actually 20mm - very annoying. He gave me three possible solutions (not counting a refund):
1. Try to find a metal working (normal) drill bit that is 20 mm. You might try a 25/32" drill bit but it is border line at .781". At least it might be less sanding. These drill bits won't be cheap.
2. Try to find a 20 mm reamer. A reamer is a precision drill bit that (normally) has straight flutes. The holes needs to be within 1/32" of the reamer size (which you are) and you want to run the reamer at 1/2 the speed of a drill bit but move it in and out faster. Again, it won't be cheap.
3. Back to sanding. As I recall, a larger dowel rod made the job faster so you may want to experiment with that some. You also use coarser sandpaper, might even try 60 or 80 grit and see what happens. The dowel and sandpaper mimic what they call a "Flap Wheel". You can do a Google search and see what you can up with.
I tried the sanding option out first, but with the 1" baltic birch hardwood it was taking over 5 minutes to do a hole. I may be retired, but that amount of time did not seem worth it.
I next tried the hardware approach. I searched amazon.com for bits and reamers. Steve was right they were expensive (up to $600.00), but I eventually found a 20mm (.7874") spiral cut chuckable reamer for $49.00. (The manufacture did not recommend straight flutes for this application) Now the waiting game again.
When the reamer arrived I immediately went to the shop and grabbed a drill motor, ready to go to work. Not a chance - the reamer was too large for a 1/2" drill chuck. I started calling rental places for a drill motor that had a 3/4" inch chuck but came up empty.
While trying to figure out what my next step was going to be, I noticed the the reamer was EXTREMELY sharp, so, with nothing to lose, I clamped the reamer into a vice grip stuck the end of the reamer into the top of one of my holes and careful to hold the reamer as true to vertical as possible, worked the vice grip handle like a ratchet wrench. In less than 5 seconds I was was through the hole. Amazed, I continued on, and in less than two hours I had completed all 244 holes and the qwas dogs fit in them like gloves.
[attachimg=5]
Any questions - feel free to contact me.
