I fully agree with those who suggest buying now and making use of Festools, knowing they will cost much more before they are worn out.
Brice mentioned investing heavily in Festools in 2007.
In January 2006, I was starting to re-activate a custom cabinet business I had operated successfully from 1959 until my employees bought me out in 1992. I retained ownership of the building. Eventually the employee owners decided to retire although they also were successful.
So in 2006 I was legally free to return to the cabinet business and I was semi retired from the movie studio business. In the old days I only built custom cabinets wholesale for designers and installers who did not want to own shops. Once it became known I was even thinking about opening another cabinet business old clients urged me to go ahead rapidly.
The day I first saw the then new Eagle Tools of Los Angeles store, owned by an old pal Jesse Barragán, I did not know he was a Festool dealer. I did know he stocked a wide selection of expensive and very good fixed tools for the furniture makers. I had the money to buy a large enough sliding table saw to break-down 4x10' sheets of plywood, a dust collection system for the slider saw and a bunch of clamps, a sliding compound miter saw and some sanders.
By coincidence the previous Saturday morning I had seen a subcontractor on This Old House using a dark blue and green plunge saw on a track to cut hardwood flooring along a wall. The brand was not mentioned. Well, before I got as far as the slider saw display, Jesse showed me a Festool TS55, which was fairly new in the USA. Jesse knew I had not then made a deal on shop space. My Pasadena shop building was leased until 2011.
Jesse asked me to try the TS55, with a CT22 dust extractor and a 3000mm guide rail. He explained that doing so would save me so much space I could work out of my condo until I could justify buying another building. Meanwhile when I needed a lot of space, table saws, jointers and thickness planers, I could rent space in shops of mutual friends who needed some extra cash.
That day I had budgeted over $30,000 for the slider saw, miter saw and the dust collection. In the blink of an eye I saved the cost of a building and I bought what I needed to start using Festools for a couple of thousand dollars. Before 2006 was ended I probably had spent darn close to the $39k on Festool sanders and routers, plus a million clamps. In 2007 I continued investing in Festools because they made me so much money and turned tasks I used to dread into jobs I enjoyed. Even in my younger days I never cared for lifting sheet goods onto a table saw and pushing the sheet back and forth through the saw.
What made sense to me was having a long rail and a shorter rail. So I would lift a sheet onto a sacrificial sheet, clamp a long rail to clean up a reference edge and walk along with the saw, dragging the green hose which collected so much dust.
It is no secret that by late 2009 I had made so much money using all my Festools I felt the time had come to find a huge industrial building while real estate prices were at a low point. I bought a lot of impressive fixed machine, but I also kept using Festools where they made good sense. I also kept buying additional Festools.
Talk about a return on investment (ROI)? Every one of my 2006 guide rails are still in frequent use. My original TS55 I do keep in reserve as the exemplar for the adjustment of toe-in and fit to the rails of every other Festool plunge saw in my shop. Still that original TS55 functions as if brand new and has never needed factory service. I own about 12 CT22s because I believe in only stocking one kind of bag. Honestly I am not sure, without checking the serial numbers, which is my original. I can say none of my Festool dust extractors has ever needed more than common sense care. The same is true of the Festool routers and sanders.
For insurance purposes this February I priced out the replacement cost of all my Festools at the 1 March 2013 prices. I was surprised that the price increases were enough I had depreciated for tax purposes and made good money using tools that could be sold at such high prices my actual cost of owner ship was virtually nothing.
It is because of such reliable tools that last forever that Festool enjoys its reputation and why guys like me, with a PhD in economics keep spending my money of Festools.
