Festool

[Never Enough Money]

I saw a Festool plunge circular saw and a Festool router used with the Festool Guide rail on "This Old House" today.

NIce. I went to the Web page and was shocked by the price.

One question: can other maufacturers routers work with the guide rail? From what I could see it looked like the guide that fits my Porter-Cable only it mated with the Festool guide rail.

Also, the Festool router looks weak. Is it?

[Dan]

On Sun 15 Feb 2004 10:37:56p, [e-mail] (Never Enough Money) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I saw this one yesterday and I've been thinking about a lot. :-)

go to and click on Clearance. I guess they didn't sell enough of 'em.

Dan

[Darryn]

the festool saw and guiderail is the zero clearance rubber strip on the edge of the rail. The first time you cut with the saw you trim the strip to zero clearance, from then on its just a case of making two small marks on the piece of board you are cutting and lining the edge up on the marks and away you go.

The new TS55 saw is even better than the old ATF 55 one as it has an anti splinter bit for the other side of the blade also

Darryn

[Never Enough Money]

Thanks Dan!

The True-Grip seems like a lot cheaper way to go. The Festool approach kinda locks you in to Festool -- the vacuum, the router, etc. The True-Grip allows you to use any tablesaw and any router -- at least I think so. Not to mention that Festool is very expensive -- probably one of those situations where you get 2% better performance for double the costs.

[Russell]

Weak it isnt...I have been a long term user of Festo and swear by it.Knowing Festo ,their rail system wont fit anything else than Festo thats where they really make their money for example the dustbags for the vacuum cost 36 euros (40$)for five and that is a ripoff but the tools are actually good value as they really last Russell

[Never Enough Money]

Thanks Darryn! Do you know whether there are dust vacuum hoses that fit the Festools and attach to non-Festool vacuums?