MFS ???

[Tinker]

I have moved my Contractor TS out of the shop.  I have been trying to set up for parallel cuts on the MFS.  I have no problems when i have a piece of wood that I know is absolutely parallel cut to use as a guide.  I can make my parallel cuts dead on.  No problems.

I am now trying to take some scraps of ply and other dimension lumber, straightening an edge and then trying to quickly set up for a parallel cut.  The problem is that it seems almost impossible to get dead on accuracy without a known parallel to use as a guide. I do have scraps that I know are dead on parallel to use as a guide, but I am trying to work with unknowns to bring with carfull milling to perfection. It can be done, but not quickly. 

I am quite sure it would be much simpler if I had the MFS.  I can see using one length as a guide for quick setup.  My question is about assembly as in making a parallelogram with the MFS.  Is that accurate with first set up of all sides parallel?  Or does it take a little fudging to get it perfect?

Of course, I wonder if i really need an answer.  I have both feet on the slippery slope with no hope for extraction as i try to persuade myself I really don't need the MFS

:

Tinker

 

[Warrior]

Tink,
Did you read Jerry's MFS notes? If not you should. They are on festools website on he tips menu. Other wise I have had excellent results using a bench hook of the required dimension less the guide rail width at each end of the cut hooked and spring clamped.
I also like to lay 2 guide rails on the piece with a spacer between them at each end. I find this to be the fastest way to get parrallel cuts on pieces over 370mm wide. 370mm being the width of the cut if i have the 2 rails together side by side with the splinter guards facing out.

Eiji

 

[Tinker]

Tink,
Did you read Jerry's MFS notes? If not you should. They are on festools website on he tips menu. Other wise I have had excellent results using a bench hook of the required dimension less the guide rail width at each end of the cut hooked and spring clamped.
I also like to lay 2 guide rails on the piece with a spacer between them at each end. I find this to be the fastest way to get parrallel cuts on pieces over 370mm wide. 370mm being the width of the cut if i have the 2 rails together side by side with the splinter guards facing out.

Eiji

Thanks Eiji,
I will probably be getting the MFS 400 before i get back into my shop in late fall.
Tinker

 

[woodshopdemos]

Tinker,
  I can't  why you are having a problem. I am sure you ave tried those things I have on my site...then why can Elena, Beth and I get parallel all the time and you not. Elena and Beth still use the two or three pencil mark routine... I like the razor blade and/or two ruler routine. I have read Jerry's treatise on use of MFS and like it, but way more work than necessary IMHO.

 

[Tinker]

Tinker,
  I can't  why you are having a problem. I am sure you ave tried those things I have on my site...then why can Elena, Beth and I get parallel all the time and you not. Elena and Beth still use the two or three pencil mark routine... I like the razor blade and/or two ruler routine. I have read Jerry's treatise on use of MFS and like it, but way more work than necessary IMHO.

I have a pile of scraps, all of which are unknown quantities as far as square & parallel.  I was trying to make a wide piece of scrap into perfectly parallel and all four corners square.  Also trying to make a perfect square out of four pieces. Sharp pencil, razor blades and those edge stops that come with the LR-32.  No matter what, the square was not square.  I was doing the setups on the MFT with the guide bar locked in and the angle guide rail locked square.  Come to find out, the guide rail and angle guide bar were not quite square to each other.  Not even enough to be seen (with my eye).  I found an old feeler guage and used one of the very thinnest tabs (numbers worn off many mons ago in my father's shop) was able to slide in between the far edge of my 12" speed square. I checked the square and it is dead on.  I bit of diddling with the two movable items on the MFT and all is now dead on.  I now have cut several pieces of scrap ply wood and 2x12's that are now dead on square. 

incidently, there was a discussion a while back about square tools.  The one square I have in my shop that is always dead on square is my plastic 12" speed square.  The back edge fits perfectly into the grove on the angled guide at back of MFT.  no play, in fact it fits so tight it is sometimes tricky to remove.  I think you mentioned having an 18" plastic speed square that is on the money.  I think one of them would be great to work with in a situation described above. I have several of the 6" & 8" aluminum ones, but not all of them are as acurate.  Of course they were knocked around for many years of construction work. They are plenty accurate for rough carpentry but for guide to cut glue lines that you can't see, not quite there whether too small or off a hair.  This plastic one has hardly seen daylight.  I don't let that one out of the shop.
Tinker

 

[woodshopdemos]

Tinker,
  You know I have high respect for you and your skills. What you are taking on, is perhaps the hardest task...making square and parallel pieces in a scrap pile. It wouldn't be any easier with a TS and slider.  I think if I had to tackle that task, I would do all the parallel cuts first. Arbitrarily, take the longer dimension on each and cut parallel with any of the parallel methods but not using a square or triangle. I think of parallel first and square both ends 2nd.
  Once you are satisfied that the long dimensions are parallel, then use your MFT and double check that fence to "locked" guide rail are square, then make the cut on one end and flip it to see the other end. If that doesn't give you a squared piece of scrap, something about a "tinker's damn" applies.
  The error that used to be made here is "mixing" square and parallel. To me, each piece gets two sides (long) parallel and the other two ends square.

 

[Tinker]

What was off in referrence to the squared fences was indecernable.  The way I was checking for perfect square was to keep rotating and cutting to 90?.  When all four sides have been cut, what was indecernable in allighnment of one cut of the setup will prove to be quite a large error by the final cut.  It is the same with making four pices cut at 45? and putting together.  If they are long pieces, the error sometimes can be hidden with careful clamping.  In carpentry, an extra finish nail on the backside of a corner will close up a gap (error in cutting) in the corner of the trim.  When you take a piece of wood about 3 or more inches in width and make 45? cuts making four short pieces, put them together into a block, it is not going to end up with tight joints in all of the corners.  the last will be too oblique, or to obtuse.  I was ending up with the last side, or last corner, whichever, about 1/64 to 1/32 off.  Either in width for the single square piece, or the same opening with the four triangles. It takes a lot of fudging to get them to come out perfect.  With trying your way, which is how I have always done it with TS, the cuts can still be so close as to be indecernable.  But when I have done the rotation method, i have always had the same results.  It takes a very slight intollerance for it to be off at the finish.  (maybe you could show that someime in one of your demo stories)

Now, back to my original question.  The MFS looks, and is advertised, to be perfectly square when put together.  I think I had phrased my question wrong.  I think it is true that it can be set up so all sides are parallel (parallelogram).  Can they be set up as a perfectly square cornered parallelogram the first time? every time?  Or does it need tinkering to get it right.

>>> off topic story.>>>  Years ago (too many to recollect), my best friend and I were in different high schools together.  One day, we happenened to run into his HS principal.  We got into a conversation and my friend introduced us.  When the teacher found out my name was Tinker, he said in his very thick Irish brogue, "Aye, an' don't ivver tell an Irishman yer name is Tinker."  "Why is that?" I asked.  "Because, in Ir-r-r-land, a Tinker is nuthing but a bum."  We all laughed.  I told this to an Irish woman friend many years later and she told me that when she was little, she could remember her mother telling the children "The Tinkers 'r comin'. The Tinkers 'r comin'." and it was not in a complimentary way.  Tinkers in Europe were a type of gypsys who roamed around fixing metal work, sometimes not exactly above boards.  Today, they would have been a building inspectors nitemare i guess.  "A Tinkers dam" really had nothin' to do with quality, but was a method ( I learned to do it with rope) of daming the flow of lead so it would flow into a cast iron pipe joint.  The dam was made with clay, but when I was learning plumbing (high school and for a while after) we used a heavy rope sort of thing to make the dam.  And that is our history lesson for today.  8) :-[
Tinker 

 

[woodshopdemos]

Tinker, the heavy rope was "oakem," wasn't it? We used to pound oakem into the joint and then make the damn. We would pour lead into the dame and it would seep into the oakem and make fore a great joint. I did it myself after watching a plumber do it to a couple of drain connects in old house built in 1900.  He charged so much I decided to do it myself on three other drain line connects. It worked well and was fun.

 

[Eli]

I figured you would have gone for the maritime angle being a Navy man, John.

Oakem or Oakum was also pounded into the gaps between planks on a ship.

I always thought the expression was doesn't "give a Tinker's fart"

 

[Tinker]

Tinker, the heavy rope was "oakem," wasn't it? We used to pound oakem into the joint and then make the damn. We would pour lead into the dame and it would seep into the oakem and make fore a great joint. I did it myself after watching a plumber do it to a couple of drain connects in old house built in 1900.  He charged so much I decided to do it myself on three other drain line connects. It worked well and was fun.

The oakum was the actual seal.  It was a soft and sort of greasy type of rope with no particular thraedto it.  you just tore off a piece, would it around the pipe and then you pounded it in eavenly around the inside of the joint and then poured lead around the remaining part of the joint.  If the hub was horizontal, the pour was easy.  you just poured and then tamped.  If the hub was verticle, you had to retain the lead so it would stay in the joint.  that is where he rope came in.  In older days, I understood clay was used.  that is where the "tinker's dam" came in.
Tinker

 

[Tinker]

I figured you would have gone for the maritime angle being a Navy man, John.

Oakem or Oakum was also pounded into the gaps between planks on a ship.

I always thought the expression was doesn't "give a Tinker's fart"

I've been accused of both.
not being worth a "tinker's dam" and being "just an old fart".  Oh well............
Tinker

 

[woodshopdemos]

I figured you would have gone for the maritime angle being a Navy man, John.

Oakem or Oakum was also pounded into the gaps between planks on a ship.

I always thought the expression was doesn't "give a Tinker's fart"

No planks on my ship, just 1/4" steel that buckled loudly in heavy weather, if you were blessed to sack out in a bed next to the hull. Thankfully, my stateroom was on the main deck level and no water buckling plates.

 

[Eli]

No planks on my ship, just 1/4" steel that buckled loudly in heavy weather, if you were blessed to sack out in a bed next to the hull. Thankfully, my stateroom was on the main deck level and no water buckling plates.

up through the hawsehole, or did you attend school for the rank?

 

[woodshopdemos]

No planks on my ship, just 1/4" steel that buckled loudly in heavy weather, if you were blessed to sack out in a bed next to the hull. Thankfully, my stateroom was on the main deck level and no water buckling plates.

up through the hawsehole, or did you attend school for the rank?

I don't exactly know those terms, but will assume they are friendly. On a destroyer, you don't get many creature comforts. We were fortunate to go thru a major overhaul and they added a very nice after-officers quarters and I did get a stateroom shared with one other. And we had AC but all berthing spaces got AC.

 

[Eli]

Of course they're friendly terms. I'm more of a wood based sea-creature, your vessels were steel, but in Royal Navy tradition (Patrick O'Brian ref.) a person who made an ascension in rank from ordinary seaman (again friendly) to officer was said to have crawled up through the hawsehole, the hole the anchor rode (not a mis-spell)  travels through on it's way to DJ's locker. I was basically asking whether you went to Annapolis or not, what your rank was, since to get even semi-private quarters on a large Navy boat was privilege, reserved for rank. I have family in both the Navy and Army, I attended a 4 yr. military college but chose private service when it was time to go down to the sea.

 

[woodshopdemos]

So here are the answers. Ships went from wood to steel so that ordinary seaman could spend time chipping, scraping and red leading. hawsehole is hausepipe in USN. Not Annapolis but OCS at Newport. ensign at first and LTjg after 18 mos. automatic and lt if I shipped over but i didnt. "Private service" meaning merchant marines? They are the untold heros of WWII.

Navy...44 years ago but like yesterday...

 

[Eli]

"Private service" meaning merchant marines?

No Sir. I thought about MM, but by the time I'd finished four years of school in a uniform, I wanted to be free. I grew up sailing around New England coastal waters. When I graduated school I did a year on this privately owned S/V:http://www.schoonerman.com/lm.htm
(in 1993, before this was written, so not on the crew that 'sunk' her)
And then lived in the USVI for a few years working other charter boats. I moved to LA to get a boat to the orient, but got stuck working in the film business for the next ten years. Building a small boat for me and the boys is on the Master project list. (although I doubt it figures at all on the Mrs. project list)

 

[iggy07]

So here are the answers. Ships went from wood to steel so that ordinary seaman could spend time chipping, scraping and red leading. hawsehole is hausepipe in USN. Not Annapolis but OCS at Newport. ensign at first and LTjg after 18 mos. automatic and lt if I shipped over but i didnt. "Private service" meaning merchant marines? They are the untold heros of WWII.

Almost untold, but not quite.

This thread has certainly drifted off the original topic, but I can't resist adding another comment.

Bruce Felknor is a long time (1949) friend of the family.  He was a merchant marine radio man in WWII, is an accomplished writer (see Google and Amazon for other titles), and edited the comprehensive The U.S. Merchant Marine at War, 1775-1945 published by Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1998 Book Review. Available through Amazon.com. Here is a review:

Bruce Felknor takes you into the real world of the merchant marine at war, drawing on obscure ship company documents and often letting the words of the seamen speak eloquently themselves. Felknor lists himself as editor of this book, yet without his fine hand and "bridges" and commentary the parts would be far less than the whole he presents. This is the real thing, folks.

Bob Frump, former maritime writer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

.
See also Bruce's Merchant Marine web site:
http://www.usmm.org/felknor.html

I toured a 'museum' Liberty Ship in San Francisco about 4 years ago -- boy, that really put things into perspective!

Ed Gallaher

 

[woodshopdemos]

Eli and Ed,
  We sure got off the thread of MFS but very interesting reading none-the-less.

 

[Eli]

Felknor's book is on my list, off-topic be damned....