OF - FH Routing Aid vs Mortise Pal

Vindingo

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Jan 23, 2009
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Pro's and Con's of both? 

I am curious to know if you can use the MP to route slots.  Will the OF FH fit on a Fein RT1800? 

Thanks
 
I have the of-fh, not the mortisepal (I do have a domino).
I use the of-fh mostly on doors. Routing slots in doorbottoms for automatic anti-draft strips; slots for the guideblocks of pocket doors; Mortising allong the long end of the door for multipoint locks, mortising frontplates of standard locks (it does a good job of keeping the mortise square to the door itself when the door is beveled).

The mortisepal seems to be focused on mortising for loose tennon joints, I guess you can use it for longer slots, but you have to move the jig alot. The of-fh can be used for such mortises in a lot of cases aswell, but you have to mark the position of the edge of the of-fh at the beginning and end of the mortise (or clamp stopblocks at those locations) because allthough the jig, and dustshroud of the router are transparant, you cannot view accurately where you are routing. (As an added opportunity for F-ups, the edges of the of-fh do not have the same distance to the centre of the bit)

The attachment point for the vac hose on the of-fh works adequately, but only for long grooves. When I bought mine, festool advertised the thing as a"universal" routerguide that could be attached to other brand routers aswell. But if I wanted to attach it to my Bosch plungerouter, I would have to remove the dusthose hookup thingy.
The mentioned thingy is sized the same as the thingy on the TS saws... 27mm hose fits inside; 36mm hose fits over (recommended), so if you have an adapter to fit the hose of the fein to a TS; it will fit the of-fh aswell.

BTW If you like the functionality of the of-fh, but the price is above your budget, you can also use long rods with an edge guide  on both sides of the router; or make one yourself; there's a well documented thread of someone doing just that; you can even order most of the parts from festool as a replacement part. (I'll do a search and post the link later)
 
Thanks for the information.  I would be using it for both slots and loose tennons so the lack of vision point is well noted.  I will be hooking it up to my MINI if the vac nozel fits with the Fein router on it.  I imagine the RT1800 is similar in size to the OF2000 but I don't know.

Does anyone know if the mortice pal has to be tight to the wood, or can it slide without changing it's width adjustments?

 
I wasn't paying attention earlier, I thought the mentioned Fein was a vacuum... :-[ I didn't know fein made routers, must have stopped doing so, can't find any on their site..

I do remember my Bosch something-1300 couldn't be centered over the hole because the base would touch the vacuumattachment port before.
 
Thanks, on that site I saw a related link to the American version of my bosch (the one that doesn't fit the of-fh) link

I have the 220V version that's called (something)1300(something) (It was made in the USA, for the European market, and features a depth scale in mm.)
 
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