Pat Warner sub-base & Festool routers?

[John Stevens]

Did this ever happen?

I made a few for my OF1000.  If you don't mind spending a couple hours of your time, it's pretty easy to make one.  And once you make the template or templates to rout and drill, you can make more pretty quickly.  I actually thought about making them for sale, but that's the difference between me and a successful businessman. 

I made a similar device that attaches to the tapped hole that the "foot thingie" attaches to.  Gotta shim it, though, because the surface that it gets bolted to isn't exactly perpendicular to the base.  Also, over on SMC, one of the guys made an extension that attaches with the rods of the edge guide.  Use your imagination and you can figure out how to DIY faster than I could explain it.

Regards,

John

 

[Jon3]

Did this ever happen?

I made a few for my OF1000.  If you don't mind spending a couple hours of your time, it's pretty easy to make one.  And once you make the template or templates to rout and drill, you can make more pretty quickly.  I actually thought about making them for sale, but that's the difference between me and a successful businessman. 

I made a similar device that attaches to the tapped hole that the "foot thingie" attaches to.  Gotta shim it, though, because the surface that it gets bolted to isn't exactly perpendicular to the base.  Also, over on SMC, one of the guys made an extension that attaches with the rods of the edge guide.  Use your imagination and you can figure out how to DIY faster than I could explain it.

Regards,

John

I may simply use some double sided tape and some bushings and figure out a way to make a template for it.  The trick would be getting it properly centered.  hrm..

 

[Daviddubya]

I talked to Pat Warner recently about the availability his bases for Festool routers, when I ordered a base for a Colt.  He has not changed his mind - he is still not interested in making Festool bases at this point.  The "trick" to making a base that works well is getting the center of the base hole aligned with the centerline of the bit.  If you don't need or use bushings, then this is no big deal.  However, one of the selling points of many of Pat's bases is the ability to use PC bushings with the bases.  A do-it-yourself base is hard to impossible to align properly.  Making one without bushing capability is pretty easy, since the alignment issue goes away.  I suppose it might be possible to make a base without a hole, and use the router with an appropriate bit to drill the center hole and/or bushing recess.  Anybody tried doing it that way?

 

[extiger]

I'm buying a Festool OF 1400 in a week or two. Since I own one of Pat Warner's offset bases (for a Milwaukee 5616), I'm thinking I'll just make a duplicate in 1/2" acrylic and drill that platform with the Festool-pattern base screws.

If I didn't have a boat-load of sheet plastic (dumpster diving at a local plastics dealer), I'd just order one of Pat W's bases for $40 and drill that.

Gary Curtis

 

[greg mann]

I talked to Pat Warner recently about the availability his bases for Festool routers, when I ordered a base for a Colt.  He has not changed his mind - he is still not interested in making Festool bases at this point.  The "trick" to making a base that works well is getting the center of the base hole aligned with the centerline of the bit.  If you don't need or use bushings, then this is no big deal.  However, one of the selling points of many of Pat's bases is the ability to use PC bushings with the bases.  A do-it-yourself base is hard to impossible to align properly.  Making one without bushing capability is pretty easy, since the alignment issue goes away.  I suppose it might be possible to make a base without a hole, and use the router with an appropriate bit to drill the center hole and/or bushing recess.  Anybody tried doing it that way?

Pat is not going to engineer a solution for which he can only sell a few bases. Dave, Your suggestion to use the router itself is the best way to do this. I believe the PC bushing hole is a pretty standard size but I don't have any where I am to measure to confirm.

 

[John Stevens]

Here's a pic of the bases I made for my OF1010.  The quality is so poor that it might be too hard to tell that they're bored for PC bushings.  The second pic shows a transfer punch mounted in a piece of scrap wood.  This increases the accuracy when you transfer the holes from the stock Festool base to your pattern.  In the first pic, the pattern for drilling the mounting holes is at the bottom left, about 7 o'clock.  Use double-sided tape to attach the pattern to your base blank and then drill the holes with a drill press.  The pattern for one of the bases is at the top left, about 10 o'clock.  Cut the plastic blank roughly to shape and then attach it with double-sided tape to the pattern and rout it to the final shape with a pattern bit or flush trim bit.  Hit it with a roundover bit to ease the edges if you like.  If you want the new edges clear, you can buff them with a Dremel and the polishing rouge.  I've read that you can also do this with an open flame, but I figured that buffing was a little less hazardous.

The "trick" to making a base that works well is getting the center of the base hole aligned with the centerline of the bit.  If you don't need or use bushings, then this is no big deal.  However, one of the selling points of many of Pat's bases is the ability to use PC bushings with the bases.

Hi, David.  The method I used was similar to the one you suggested.  I made the bit/bushing hole last.  After mounting the base to the router, I used a "plunge bit" to make a perfectly centered hole.  Then I chucked the router bit into my drill press, used it to center the router base on the drill press table, clamped the base to the table and drilled to the correct depth with the correct-sized Forstner bit.  Flipped, re-centered, clamped and drilled to the correct depth with the other correct-sized Forstner bit.

If you wanted to do production runs, you could imagine some ways to make this process more efficient.  But if you just want to make a few for yourself, this'll do.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

John

 

[John Stevens]

In my first post in this thread, I mentioned another thing that attaches to the threaded hole where the "footie thing" mounts to the base of the OF1000.  Here are a couple of pics of it.  As you can see, it's pretty small and not shaped for a good, comfy grip.  That's because I made it for another purpose, but you could make something like this to function just like one of Pat Warner's extended bases.  The hole was drilled with a drill press.  The little blue rectangle you see in the first pic is a piece of masking tape that  acts as a shim to get the bottom of the wooden piece flat to the table.

Regards,

John

 

[John Stevens]

In my first post on this thread, I mentioned an alternative posted by a guy on SMC.  The guy was Dan Larson, and here's a link to his most-excellent post.  I haven't made one of these yet, but it's on my list.
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?p=306345

Regards,

John

 

[Jon3]

John,

That was exactly what I was thinking of doing.  I'm going to try and get a guy I know with a HAAS CNC to trace and reproduce a couple of different bases in acrylic/lexan, if I can work out a deal with him.  If that fails, I'll try your method.  Or maybe both. =)

 

[gkeas]

Pat is not going to engineer a solution for which he can only sell a few bases. Dave, Your suggestion to use the router itself is the best way to do this. I believe the PC bushing hole is a pretty standard size but I don't have any where I am to measure to confirm.

I believe the PC guide bushing hole is 1 3/16.  You might measure before you drill one, though

 

[John Stevens]

I believe the PC guide bushing hole is 1 3/16.  You might measure before you drill one, though

IIRC, the hole has to be drilled with two different-sized bits.  I forget what the sizes are but yes, you can always measure and find out.  Forstner-style bits for wood will do the job, but it ain't pretty.

Regards,

John

 

[LaserGecko]

The company that I was originally going to have do this flaked out on me, big time. Good thing, too, in retrospect because, I've found a new company that isn't going to rake me over the coals. They're already doing some vacuum forming and CNC work for my new business and he's actually pretty eager to help.

A couple of quick questions that I never got nailed down from the last time. These are in reference to the Circle Cutting Index that will be built into the base:

What size straight bit would you all prefer to use for circle cutting from the index pin? 1/2"?

What diameter index pin would be preferable?

 

[Prater]

If you want to make your own try going to a local acrylic supply and see if they have a scrap bin.  If not a 24"x48" sheet of 1/2 inch is around $90, thats if they will sell it cut to those dimensions.  A lot of places make you buy a whole 48x96 sheet.

 

[Jon3]

The company that I was originally going to have do this flaked out on me, big time. Good thing, too, in retrospect because, I've found a new company that isn't going to rake me over the coals. They're already doing some vacuum forming and CNC work for my new business and he's actually pretty eager to help.

A couple of quick questions that I never got nailed down from the last time. These are in reference to the Circle Cutting Index that will be built into the base:

What size straight bit would you all prefer to use for circle cutting from the index pin? 1/2"?

What diameter index pin would be preferable?

When I'm circle cutting, I prefer to use a smaller bit, as it doesn't have to work as hard and remove as much material, so I'd prefer a nice carbide spiral downshear 1/4".

Most of the indexers I've seen are 1/2".