Woodpeckers Mortise Base?

[onocoffee]

For whatever reason, I was perusing the Woodpeckers site today (looking for their pencil) and came across their Mortise Base. Looks like an advancement on the acrylic Festool version - and a little bit cheaper. Has anyone used this? Thoughts?

https://www.woodpeck.com/mortise-base.html

 

[luvmytoolz]

It is a nice looking unit, and you'd be able to really tighten the knobs firm.

 

[bobtskutter]

I bought a second OF1400 parallel guide for my router. Does the same thing.

Bob

 

[Cheese]

It is a nice looking unit, and you'd be able to really tighten the knobs firm.

I like it, however tightening the knobs too much also could prevent easy travel of the router. Actually, that's the thing I like about it most. You can easily adjust the drag of the router on the fly with a twist of a knob.

 

[luvmytoolz]

I like it, however tightening the knobs too much also could prevent easy travel of the router. Actually, that's the thing I like about it most. You can easily adjust the drag of the router on the fly with a twist of a knob.

For light work I'd absolutely agree, but hogging with a 1/2" or 3/4" cutter can really loosen things up and cause components to drift under heavy load like deep mortising for a lockset.

When I made my first mortise base I used what I thought were pretty beefy knobs but I still had to tighten the bejesus out of them to keep them firm under load, the next one I make will be beefier still with lever handles, but I'll also use silicone sheets to provide more grip for the parts to minimise any inadvertant loosening.

 

[jeffinsgf]

I'm not sure I buy into "adjust the drag...on the fly". I always get the drag right where I want it, then lock down the clamps onto the rods. With those clamped properly, the screw has no influence on the fence position...in or out.

I really like the Mortise Base. Kody did a great job of making it work with any router base that accepts guide rods. Just to share a little history on how it came about, The linked video shows the shop built version I came up with to demonstrate our metric mortising bits. That got the engineering department's gears turning.