Novice hates parallel guides, MFT and TS55!

[attorneygzc]

Call me an idiot, but after purchasing the TS55 and parallel guides I was excited about making a book case for my daughter. I purchased the material, made my cuts and when trying to put the case together, I realized all of my cuts were crooked. Doesn't this stuff come squared right out of the box?
Please help guys.

 

[WarnerConstCo.]

You really don't want me to call you that do you? [big grin]

What caused things to be crooked?
Did you assume the sheet of ply was square?

Did you check the fence on the mft to make sure it was on at 90?

As far as the parallel guides go, I think once you initially set them up, they should be good after that.

You didn't take any measurements during cutting to make sure stuff was ok?

I have only checked my mft/3 once, seems to do the job for me.

 

[Warrior]

Get to know your equipment first. buy a square for goodness sake. then report back.

Would you call a saw faulty if out of the box it didnt cut at 90deg when set to 0? no, if you did I would have to call you an _______!

The things you didnt do first are called "making adjustments"

Good luck.

 

[ajones]

Call me an idiot, but after purchasing the TS55 and parallel guides I was excited about making a book case for my daughter. I purchased the material, made my cuts and when trying to put the case together, I realized all of my cuts were crooked. Doesn't this stuff come squared right out of the box?
Please help guys.

Hi it does not sound like you are a carpenter.. if you are not, you will not get perfect results first time whatever gear you have, you will need to take some time and learn how your tools work. read the distructions ;D

if you are.....then get a grip.... [big grin] [big grin]

 

[Chris Hughes]

Well all is not lost.  Did you glue and screw the carcasses together?  If not then I would disassemble the shelves and re-dimension your parts.  As stated in this thread, your initial set up is critical.  You can rip your stock sheets parallel but still end up with ends out of square.  Once your ends are squared to the rip then your assembly should go much better and square will be the result.

I build case work mostly in the field so I square up every time I set up.  I takes a couple of minutes but it is much better to spend minutes on setup then the time to figure out where I went wrong and how to fix it. 

On my mft I have made an index line for my fence that is related to square from the stops set for the cross rail.  If my fence gets knocked out in transport I can see it easily. 

Parallel guides have to be calibrated to your rail and saw initially.  I went to a couple of End Users classes and learned how to set those up there, but I know there are other ways to see how to calibrate the guides.

Good luck and I hope you can save your project.  Don't give up, you really do have some of the best equipment made and support backing it. 

 

[tigger]

All the guides do is ensure you have parallel cuts. It has nothing to do with squareness. Check out the Festool page on YouTube. They have fantastic tutorials on how to use the tools properly.

Good luck

 

[kosta]

Call me an idiot, but after purchasing the TS55 and parallel guides I was excited about making a book case for my daughter. I purchased the material, made my cuts and when trying to put the case together, I realized all of my cuts were crooked. Doesn't this stuff come squared right out of the box?
Please help guys.

The typical problems with sheet goods.

Step 1. square the panel.
If you don't, all other curt are out of square and  with every other cut  the results are more of the same and double the mistake.
Use the same tape measure for all your cuts.
You can't use the paralllel guides, the mft and your tape measure the same time if you don't calibrate them to the saw and to each other.

 

[waho6o9]

Welcome to the learning curve and to the forum.  You can do it, you da man.  [big grin]

 

[attorneygzc]

Thanks for all your help, and even to the guys who acquiesced and called me an idiot. No worries, I am an attorney and get called an idiot a few times a day. I am not a carpenter and assumed all sheet goods were square and figured for the price, the festool would be good out of the box. I learned, thankfully not at a high price.

 

[Brice Burrell]

Thanks for all your help, and even to the guys who acquiesced and called me an idiot. No worries, I am an attorney and get called an idiot a few times a day. I am not a carpenter and assumed all sheet goods were square and figured for the price, the festool would be good out of the box. I learned, thankfully not at a high price.

Welcome to the forum! [welcome]

You're not an idiot, you're just learning the ins and outs of a new system. I'd never trust any tool to be perfectly calibrated right out of the box, no matter the price. As Eiji pointed out get yourself a good square (and carefully check it to make sure it's square). Then you're ready to setup your MFT. Here's a video showing the setup for the MFT by Festool trainer Steve Bace.
MFT 3 setup

And here's a video of the calibration process for the parallel guides by Festool's Brian Sedgeley.
Festool Parallel guide system

These videos should help you get started. If you have any more question feel free to ask, there are a ton of guys here that will be happy to help. Good luck and let us know how it works out.

 

[rwdawson]

.... I am an attorney and get called an idiot a few times a day. I am not a carpenter and assumed all sheet goods were square and figured for the price....

I'm not a carpenter, either.  I used to assume that all attorneys were square and figured for the price.

 

[attorneygzc]

.... I am an attorney and get called an idiot a few times a day. I am not a carpenter and assumed all sheet goods were square and figured for the price....

I'm not a carpenter, either.  I used to assume that all attorneys were square and figured for the price.

You're a funny guy. No they are not all square even for the price, but they are people, not tools.

 

[Deke]

How many lawyers does it take to cut a square sheet of plywood? Boy, I wish I actually had a punch line for this. I'm kidding, my father is a lawyer.

Dude, honestly, you cannot blame the tools here, I don't care who makes them, Sears or Festool or some bazillion dollar hand plane. Making mistakes is part of wood working. Unlike so much else in life, you can't just pony up some $$$ and get everything you want. You have to develop skill, technique and methods. It hurts, it's not easy and you will make tons of mistakes. Some day, you can laugh at them.

Like this. One of my first Festool ventures was to use my shiny new MFT/3 and OF 1400 router to make some long dados on big panels. Oops, I didn't tighten the router to the guide and it veered not just off course ruining half a $90 piece of cherry ply, it went into my $150 Festool rail and ruined it too! If I would have been smart, I would have chopped off the bad part of that rail and had me a nice short size spare for all kinds of work, but instead I decided I simply had to take out my frustration (at myself) by bending that rail into a useless piece of junk.

A year later and I use my Festool stuff to make all kinds of things, some very precise and very square. I can do amazing things that amaze myself. However, I am still a little gun shy with the router in the rail.

 

[mwhafner]

you can't just pony up some $$$ and get everything you want

Not true. 

But seriously, just take a little time to setup you gear and you will be impressed with the results.

 

[GPowers]

So what IS the proper procedure to square up sheet goods, with the TS55 and a guide rail,  before you start breaking it down?

 

[ajones]

there's no way..............

 

[EcoFurniture]

The way I did it:

First trim 1/8 off the long edge to get a clean and straight edge to start from.
Mark your cut line with a pencil, put your guide rail down and start ripping.
Next, place that strip onto the MFT/3 against the fence and square it it off by trimming 1/8 off one end.
Adjust the flag stop to the length you need, turn that strip 180deg. put the trimmed end against the flag stop and with the flip down  guide rail make your cross cut.

You should now have a perfectly square piece in front of you.

 

[ajones]

Hi read the question again...............we all do what you discribe [big grin]

 

[jgag]

no such thing as a dumb question - thought I'd worked it all out but still learnt 3 new things from that Steve Bace video...

 

[Jesse Cloud]

Give it up guys.  Novice has figured out our little sham.  He is on to our dirty secret that the parallel guides, the mft, and the ts55 are just junk.

Tell you what Novice... if it will soften the blow, I'll give you 50% of retail value for that pile of junk. [big grin]

Seriously, if you can't get square cuts, there's something off in your technique or maybe the way the mft was assembled.  If you let us know where you are, there's probably another Festooler in town who would be happy to provide a mentoring session.