MFS Jerry Work

8/10/2019 MFS Jerry Work

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Advanced Cutting and Routing TechniquesUsing the Festool MFS Fence System

Text and Photos by Jerry Work

Isn ! t it interesting how every so often a simple appearing new tool or technique comesalong that offers us the opportunity to make a quantum leap in our productivity? Onceput to use, we can ! t believe we ever got along without it. Yet, when we rst look at it wehave trouble comprehending just how it can make such an impact. I want to share withyou one such simple appearing new tool that can radically improve the accuracy andexibility of Festool guided rail cutting and routing - the Festool MFS fence system.

While it is described in the Festool literature as a multi-routing template, and it is verygood at that function, we will discover here just how much more than that it becomeswhen used in conjunction with Festool guide rails as a universal squaring, aligning,cutting and routing guide . We will learn how greatly it increases the versatility andaccuracy of setting guide rails for precise and repeatable cutting and routing operations.We will learn how it facilitates cutting of everything from multiple, identical narrow stripsto adding sliding table-saw-like accuracy to breaking down large panels. We will alsosee how using it we can prep solid wood stock to be perfectly square and precisely di-mensioned just as one would normally do on large industrial machinery as well as howwe can cut complex joints like haunched tenons and interlocking sliding dovetails using

just Festool hand power tools, the Festool Multi Function Table, Festool guide rails andthe Festool MFS fence system.

Most readers of this piece already havesome experi-ence with orat least anunderstand-ing of Fes-tool guidedrail cutting.

Since the in-troduction of

hand powertools, usershave createda whole vari-ety of jigsand xturesto help guidea saw or

router in a straight line.

Unfortu-nately, mostof those ef-forts dependon the userbeing able tokeep thebase of thesaw or router

rmly againstthe edge ofsome sort offence. Manynd it hard todo that withaccuracy andrepeatability

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since saws and routers are subjectedboth to in-thrust forces which tend topush the saw or router against the fenceas well as out-thrust forces which tend topush the saw or router away from the

fence. Far too often the result is a lessthan perfect straight cut.

The innovative engineers at Festool de-veloped a unique guide rail (the horizon-tal piece in this photo) which features ahat shaped track onto which each of itscutting tools rides. A U shaped channelis cast or cutinto the baseof each cut-

ting tool orinto a guidemade just forthat cuttingtool. Thatchannel hasgibbs whichcan be ad-

justed so thechannel tsrmly on the

hat shapedsection onthe guiderail. Sincethe base ofthe cutting tool is held rmly on bothsides as the two sides of the U engagethe two sides of the hat, the tool is guidedin a perfectly straight line whether sub-

jected to in-thrust or out-thrust forces.This is the heart of Festool guided rail

cutting and routing.

What this allows is a whole new way ofmachining wood. Instead of passing thework piece by a stationary cutter, guidedrail machining allows the cutter to bemoved past the stationary work piece in ahighly controlled manner. This opens up

all sorts of things that become easy to dowhich previously, using the old tech-niques, were hard to do.

One example is the ability to easily cut

multiple mirrored stopped dados or slid-ing dovetail slots on either side of a cabi-net carcass. When you try to do this withconventional stationary cutting tools youwind up referencing some of the cuts offof the top of one piece and their mates offof the bottom of the other piece. Youmight get lucky and have two such

stopped mir-rored slotsline up that

way, but it isa rare crafts-person whocan makefour, ve, sixor more suchslots line up.Using Fes-tool guidedrail routing itis easy to do

as manysuch stoppedmirroredslots as youwish and

have them all align perfectly.

Since the Festool offerings are all con-sidered parts of one system, there aremany components from which to choose.Many people start with a Festool circular

saw, a guide rail, some clamps to holdthe guide rail rmly to the work piece andone of the excellent Festool dust collec-tors so that the cutting operation makesfar less mess of saw dust all over theplace.

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Festool MFS system components


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The rst few cuts using this set up areoften a revelation for the user. Suddenlyit is easy to break down that large sheetof plywood or MDF that is so awkwardand potentially dangerous to cut on a

conventional table saw. The user isblown away by the fact that the rst cutwith the circular saw cuts a rubber edgeon the guide rail to be zero clearance tothe saw blade from that point forward.

That zero clearance edge on the guiderail makes setting the guide rail to meas-ured marks a cinch, and italso provides for a splinterfree cut along the inside of

the cut line. On the TS se-ries circular saws there isalso a sacricial plastic partthat provides a zero clear-ance, chip free cut on theoutside of the cut line as well.

While it is easy to set theguide rail accurately to marksmeasured out on both edgesof a work piece, measure-

ment errors can creep in ifyou want to cut multiplepieces of exactly the samesize. We will show in a mo-ment how to use the MFSuniversal squaring, aligning, cutting androuting guide to make multiple perfectlysized pieces with one simple set up.

Since we will be referring to the MFSguide frequently in this manual I will leave

off the universal squaring, aligning, cut-ting and routing part of its name andsimply refer to it as the MFS guide orfence from here on.

Once new users get used to guided railcutting, they often will add next a FestoolMulti-function Table (MFT) to support the

work pieces at a more comfortable work-ing height.

When they rst look at the MFT, they seea nicely constructed portable table with a

bunch of holes in the top. A bit closer in-spection reveals that the table alsocomes with supports to hold the guide railin exactly the same place every time it ismounted to the table and with a miterfence so the work piece can be held at aprecise angle relative to the guide rail.

The miter fence has a T slot which ac-cepts stops so that once a measured dis-tance back from the front edge of theguide rail is established, work pieces canbe positioned for repeat cross cuts of thesame length with very good results.

Again, however, the precision of thelength dimension is a function of how wellusers read the tape measure, how accu-rately they make their mark at the in-tended length of cut, and how accuratelythey set the stop to the mark. The proc-ess works very well for most cross cuts

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The MFS system used as a veryprecise vernier fence for posi-tioning the work piece relative toFestool guide rails


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but measurement errors can again creepin.

Rips, especially thin rip cuts, are anothermatter all together. Most users nd it dif-

cult to accurately set up the guide rail forrip cuts as they again must rely on meas-ured marks on two edges of the workpiece. Then they must align the frontedge of the guide rail to those marks.

Doing so for one rip cut usually worksokay so long as the work piece is wide

enough to provide good purchase for theguide rail. If the intent is to produce mul-tiple rip cuts of exactly the same width, asin making rail and stile components,things get a bit more difcult, especiallyfor rst time users.

Also, if the intent is to produce multiplethin strips, say 10mm (3/8) or less inwidth, that is also difcult for most to doaccurately. If the work piece is set under

the guide rail for good purchase then thework piece has to be moved out eachtime by the sum of the intended workpiece width plus the actual saw kerfwidth. It is certainly possible to set upstops or fences to do that, but the proc-ess is not very fast and can be frustratingfor some.

We will see shortly how we can use theFestool MFS fence components to makevery precisely dimensioned thin or widerip cuts limited only by the length of theguide rail in use and the ability to support

the work piece across its length. Oneexample we will use will be making railand stile components to a very close tol-erance and cutting haunched tenons onthe ends of the rails all using just the Fes-tool guide rails and MFS fence compo-nents. In another example we will ripmultiple 5mm wide strips to use as inlaymaterial, again just using Festool guiderails and MFS guides.

We will also show how to use the com-ponents of the MFS fence system asmeasured story sticks to aid settingguide rails on large sheet goods veryprecisely as is shown in this photo.

Then we will turn our attention to theuse of the MFS fence system for guidinga Festool router for doing everything

from open eld inlay work to delicatestring inlays, to complex pattern and tem-

plate routing to produce multiple com-plexly shaped parts quickly and easily.

Once we tackle all of these uses for theMFS fence system, I think you will reachthe same conclusion I did that the FestoolMFS is a simple looking tool which canradically improve the accuracy of all yourguided rail cutting and routing operationsthereby helping you make a quantumleap in your productivity.

So, grab a beverage, sit back and let ! stake this journey together.

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MFS proles used as storysticks to accurately positionFestool guide rails


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What is the FestoolMFS fence or guidesystem? At it! s heart, the MFS is a veryprecise, complex aluminum extru-sion 80mm wide and 16mm thick.It comes in 200mm, 400mm,700mm, 1000mm and 2000mmlengths shown in this photo sittingon top of a Festool guide rail.That is roughly 3 1/8 wide, 5/8thick with standard lengths of a bitover 8, a bit over 16, 27 1/2, 393/8 and 78 3/4. From here on Iwill only refer to the metric sizes as that is

how each of these extrusions is identiedand marked.

Along one edge are ruled marks in milli-meters starting at zero and going to thelength of the extrusion. The ends are cutvery accurately at 90 degrees.

On the top and bottom 80mm widths areT tracks the same size and shape as

the Festool guide rail T tracks so thesame Festool clamps and other

accessories will t.

On both sides of the 80mmwidths and along each 16mmside are V shaped tracksunique to the MFS. Festoolsupplies a variety of differentnuts that slide into these Vtracks to allow the attachment

of different supplied and shopbuilt components.

One of the nuts that ts into thetrack on one or both 16mmsides is a threaded insert(shown below) which is heldrmly in place. A hole throughthat insert allows a 4mm cap

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Special MFS V track, oneon each side and three oneach face

Standard Festool Ttrack on each face


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head machine screw to pass through tothread into a short V nut. By sliding that

short V nut into the side V track in an-other unit, two extruded pieces can beassembled at right angles to one another.

The picture above shows how a standardFestool F style clamp (48957 and489571) ts into the T slot on either faceso you have lots of options as to how toclamp these proles to your work piece orto a Festool Multi-function table.

This picture shows how the special MFSV nuts t into the V track to hold allkinds of jigs and xtures. The roundpiece in the center is a pivot point for the

circle and arc routing which is easily doneusing the MFS proles. Here are detailed

shots of that standard piece and the

two standard V nuts. The one with twoholes is threaded for 5mm, the smallerone with the detent ball for 4mm.

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Four such extruded pieces assembled atright angles to one another form a verysquare and ad-

justable rectan-gle.

A ball headed3mm Allen keyis supplied toallow you toeasily tighten orloosen theseconnectingpoints so youcan slide theextruded pieces

to form rectan-gles of any sizeup to the lengthof the extrusionplus the 80mmwidth of the ad-

joining extrudedpiece. The in-side rectangleformed is thelength of the extruded piece less

the 80mm width of the adjoiningextruded piece.

For example, the starter set492610 which is listed in the Fes-tool catalog as 15.7 by 7.8 andcalled MFS 400 has two 200mmextruded pieces and two 400mmextruded pieces. They will makea rectangle up to 280mm by480mm outside and 120mm by

320mm inside.Starter set MFS 700 shownabove with the Festool catalogopen for size comparison has two400mm and two 700mm extru-sions so it will make a rectangle as large

as 780mm by 480mm outside and320mm by 620mm inside.

You can also purchaseadditional longer extru-

sions in either 1000mmor 2000mm lengths.Two or more extrusionscan be joined end toend with MFS joiningunits (the two hole Vnuts and 5mm setscrews shown on theprevious page) so thereis really no limit to howlarge a rectangle you

can form for special ap-plications.

The starter kits also in-clude two heavy metalangles (shown in thephoto left) roughly80mm wide with one30mm and one 60mmside. These have two

4.5mm slots cut into them through which4mm bolts can pass to thread into one of

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Standard components shipped

with the MFS 700 starter kit


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the special nuts that t into the V slots.This allows the heavy metal angle piecesto be used to locate the extrusions rela-tive to the sides or edges of a work pieceand/or to fasten the extrusions to the

work piece.Festool also supplies a machined alumi-num piece shown below that is 50mm by50mm and 16mm thick with a 30.25mmhole in the center and a tongue on two ofits sides that ts into the V slots. One ofthe tongues is split with a set screw thatwill widen the split to fasten the aluminum

piece in place anywhere along the edge

of any of the extruded pieces.

This piece has a number of uses, themost common of which is to receive a30mm guide bushing on a router. A 5mmpivot point (shown before) is also sup-plied which will fasten to one of the spe-cial nuts that slide in the V slots. With apivot point at one end and a guide bush-ing holder at the other, you can quicklyestablish a circle or arc routing jig limited

only by the combined lengths of all of theMFS extrusions you own. With the widevariety of router bits available you canuse this set up to cut and/or edge route abewildering array of arced or circularshaped work pieces.

For example, an elegant head board canbe made with a sophisticated long radiusarc across the top that would be veryhard to duplicate any other way.

The nal component supplied with eitherthe MFS 400 or MFS 700 starter kits isthe clever molded plastic anti-tip ring

shown in the two photos above which willsupport the router base while you areedge routing around either the inside orthe outside of the formed rectangle. Thisblack molded piece accommodates24mm, 27mm, 30mm or 40mm diameterrouter guide bushings. The design of thispiece allows the guide bushing to rotatewhile you move along the edge keeping

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this anti-tip piece always with maximumsupport for the overhanging base of therouter. Note how the lip on the guidebushing sits in a recess in the anti-tippiece so, no matter where you go with the

router, this anti-tip piece stays in placedoing its job of stabilizing the router so itstays at and level with the top of theMFS proles. Very slick and very useful.

Also available is what Festool calls arouting slide shown in the picture above.This is a heavy stamped metal bridge

750mm long and 180mm wide with a slotcut down the center sized to receive a30mm guide bushing and a bent up lip oneach long side for rigidity. The Festoolrouter bases t comfortably inside the twobent lips so you can attach a 30mm guidebushing and pass a router bit across the

full inside width of any rectangle up to thesize of the MFS 700. The guide bushingkeeps the router and the bit centered onthe slot.

Along one short edge the bridge featuresa lip bent down with holes in it positionedfor a 4mm threaded lock lever screwed

into one of the special V nuts. This isshown at the front of the slide in the pic-ture below left.

When you insert the V nut into one of

the V grooves on the 16mm edges ofthe extruded piece, two stamped tonguesalso engage in one of the top V grooveson that same extruded piece which will

allow the bridge to move easilyside to side at 90 degrees tothe MFS prole or be lockedinto place by the lever boltshown.

A pointer indicating the centerline of the slot, and hence therouter bit, makes setting thedesired center line measure-ment a breeze. In the photobelow it is set to exactly120mm from the right inneredge of the MFS rectangle.

With the router slide you havetwo dimensional control overthe movement of the router

suspended over the top face of the workpiece. Since the router can plunge up ordown, you wind up with three dimensionalcontrol of the router cutter.

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Stamped tongueskeep the routingslide square

Lever bolt locksposition


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While there are many uses for this ar-rangement, the most common is to routea recess into the face of a workpiece to receive what is calledopen eld inlays like the sample

shown here.Adding inlays such as these to atop, front or sides of a chest orshelf unit is a fast way to reallyincrease the perceived value ofyour work with little additional ef-fort on your part. This is just oneof the ways the MFS helps youmake a quantum leap in yourproductivity. We will cover this

feature in more detail when weget to the chapter on inlays.

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Open eld inlay in sample piece afterbeing polished with the FestoolRO150. The eld is Brazilian cherry.The dark red inlay is South Africanblood wood. The lighter colored inlayis Oregon Big Leaf maple burl thatwas cut from the piece above.

Notice how clean the corners, oor andedges of an open eld female recessare when your router is guided by theMFS proles and the router slide. Thispiece is African Mahogany, a wood no-torious for its tendency to splinter alongedges like this.


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Using the MFS as a largeand very accurate square.Now matter what kind of furniture you

build, it is critical to be able to create veryaccurate square components that are ex-actly the size you want them to be. Byaligning all of the outer edges and endsof the MFS extrusions, you form a veryaccurate rectangle with close to perfect90 degree corners.

In this photo you can see a large class 2steel reference square placed inside theMFS rectangle. To the right is a closerview showing just how very square theMFS rectangle really is.

The one shown is formed from the MFS700 starter kit so it is 780mm by 480mmoutside. That is a square that is over 30by nearly 19, larger than any accurate

square you are likely to encounter. Forvisual reference that is a one meter (39long) MFS extrusion in the photo to theleft.

To use the MFS extrusions as a largesquare, assemble the MFS into a rectan-gle of maximum proportions and with the

ruler marked edges facing out. This iseasily done by using a block of wood tomake sure that each end and each edgeare carefully aligned at all four corners.Tighten down the attachment screws andrecheck to make sure you really have arectangle. Measure the diagonals to

make sure.

With the MFS700 shown here the diago-nal measurement will be 915.8mm. Fromhigh school geometry you will rememberthat any right triangle has a diagonal thatis the square root of the sum of the twosides squared. In the case of theMFS700 the two sides are 780mm (the700mm prole length and the 80mm ad-

joining prole width) and 480mm long.

Square those numbers, add them to-gether and take the square root of thesum and you should get 915.86025mm.Before you get carried away trying tomeasure the diagonals with such preci-sion, keep in mind that one millimeter isabout .040 (forty thousands of an inch)

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so one tenth of a millimeter is just .004(four thousands of an inch) which most ofus would have a hard time seeing evenwith the most accurate measuring stick.

If the cut lengths of your extruded piecesare off by just one tenth of a millimeter,the resulting diagonal measurement willchange by more than one tenth of a mil-limeter. So, don ! t get hung up on whatyour measured diagonal is, only that thetwo are the same so you know you haveas close to a perfect square as you canmeasure.

Or, as I do, if you have a good referencesquare that you trust, use it to conrmthat your MFS rectangleis really square. If youmeasure any differenceat all across the diago-nals, loosen thescrews, make sure yourends and edges arecarefully aligned andtighten them again.

The resulting rectangleis very rigid and popu-lated with all those niceT and V grooves sothere is no limit to howyou can use it to squareup just about anythingyou make. The rulermarkings along all fouredges make for goodreference settings.

If you need an even bigger square, sim-ply use longer extrusions or put two ormore extrusions end to end to formlonger ones.

If you need an open L or T shapedsquare rather than a rectangle, you canplace the end connector inserts on both

sides of one extrusion so you draw it verytightly up against the edge of another toform a large L or T with very close to aperfect 90 degree corner.

I can!

t measure any out of square on myextrusions joined this way when meas-ured with the class 2 steel referencesquare shown which has 500mm by250mm arms. Since the degree ofsquare with just two pieces joined to-gether is dependent on just how squarethe ends of the extrusions were cut, Iwould hesitate to call it perfect, but it isvery close.

When you put all four sides together, anyerror in how square theends were cut will tendto be cancelled out re-sulting in a rectangle ofquite signicant accu-racy, certainly more ac-curate than thatstamped framingsquare you might havebeen using up to this

point and, as we willsee in the next section,far more useful than asimilar sized referencesquare.

Now that you have areally good largesquare, start by layingout a known square

corner into which you

can clamp all your square and rectangu-lar components like rail and stile doors,panels and the like. If you own a FestoolMulti-function Table you can quickly makesquaring arms as shown in the manualGetting the Most from the Festool Multi-function Table available for free down-load from the Festool USA web site.

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Two MFS proles can be joinedanywhere along the edges toform a T or L square


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Using the Festool MFSfence system to accu-rately position your guide

railsThis is one of the most basic things youwill do every day whether for cutting stockto size or for routing grooves or for ma-chining joints. There are several varia-tions, but one of my favorites is using themetric markings along the edges of twoextruded MFS proles as a long and veryaccurate vernier attached to a moveablefence.

This photo shows the components youwill use sitting on top of a Festool Multi-Function table. (Actually, in use here aretwo Festool tables hooked together sideby side with table joining units.)

These tables are in daily use in my studioand have been for a couple of years sothey show the spots and wear of heavyindustrially use. Even so they remaindead on at and, along with another table

made from three Festool table tops (theycall them plates), serve as my primaryassembly work stations.

The components you will use include aMFS rectangle (in this case a 400mm by700mm rectangle), one additional MFSprole (in this case a 1000mm one), twostandard Festool F clamps which willcome up from under the table to securethe individual prole against which the

rectangle will slide, a standard Festoolguide rail, and the side table mounts.

The rst thingis to mount thesingle proleinto the Fclamps frombelow the tableso the clampsare not in the

way. In thephoto to theright you cansee how theT track on thebottom of theMFS prole receives the standard FestoolF clamp arm. I slide the arm over twoclamps (arrows) inserted from below thetable in the side most row of 20mm tableholes. Do not tighten the clamps yet.

Now mount the guide rail in the table sidemounts, set it on top of the individualMFS prole and the MFS rectangle andlock the height cams to hold the guide railproperly in place. Make sure the under-side of the hat groove on the guide railsits in the lip on the table side mount op-

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posite thepivot so itis rigidlycontrolled.

Use ablock ofwood toregister theMFS rec-

tangle with the front edge of the guide railand bring the individual prole up againstthe side of the rectangle so it is exactly90 degrees to the leading edge of theguide rail.

The shot above shows a closer look athow simple it is to align theindividual prole to be at 90degrees to the guide rail.

Now tighten the clamps frombelow so the individual pro-le cannot move.

At this point you could usethe rectangle to set all yourcutting lengths for both ripand cross cuts, but let ! s doone more thing to take ad-vantage of those nice rulermarkings along the edges ofthe MFS proles.

When you put two rulers side by side youform a vernier that is very easy to read.Actually in a true vernier you would havenine marks on one side and ten in thesame space on the other so you can eas-

ily dial in .1 increments. With the MSFproles they are all marked the same sowe will just use the marks as a visual ref-

erence. It is easy to estimate down to.2mm or lower with a bit of practice.

To quickly do the calibration, set a clampto lock down the rectangle as shownabove as we now want to slide the indi-

vidual prolewithout alter-ing square sothe marksline up con-veniently forus.

I like to slidethe individualprole untilan even unitmark on itlines up withan even unit

mark on the rectangle. Where I have

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them set for this photo the two 30 marksconveniently align as is shown below.

Tighten the clamps again on the individ-ual prole and release the clamp on therectangle as you now have calibrated thescales so zero length of cut is when thetwo 30 marks line up. To help me re-member where zero is, I slide a couple ofthe two hole V nuts into the V tracks,align one end of each with the zero point(the 30 marks in this case) and lock them

down with set screws.Now we can slide the rectangle down towhatever length of cut we want. As longas you keep the edge of the rectangletightly against the edge of the individualMFS prole, the leadingedge of the rectangle willalways be parallel with theguide rail and a knowndistance away from it ! s

front edge.So, if you want to rip a se-ries of 5mm strips, justmove the rectangle 5mmand clamp it down asshown to the right. If youwant a 50mm wide cut,

move the rectangle 50mm as shownhere.

Note that the 50mm (or whateverlength of cut you set) will also showwhen you lift the guide rail and seehow the leading edge of both thexed individual prole and the rectan-

gle line up as pictured below.

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V nuts make an easy-to-seereminder of which two marks (30in this case) represent zerolength of cut relative to the front

edge of the guide rail

50 millimeters


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Now that we know we can set any lengthof cut easily and with great precision weare ready to do some cutting.

Set the rectangle for the desired length of

cut. Let!

s say we want to cut this gluedup maple board to 350mm long. Oncethe rectangle is clamped down at 350mmback from the front edge of the guide rail,check to make sure it is snug against thexed individual prole and slide the work

piece into place.

One edge will be against the xed indi-vidual prole acting as a side fence andthe end will be against the leading edgeof the rectangle acting as a length stop.

A couple of things to note at this point.Look at the photo above. Notice how,

just by positioning the work piece, youreye can quickly conrm whether the cor-ner closest to my hand is really square ornot. If it is not square, then your workpiece will not come out square since thecut you are about to make will be 90 de-grees to the side against the side fence.

Good practice is to rst make a squaringcut on this end before you set the rectan-gle for the desired length of cut. Justmove the rectangle a bit further away andput the edge of the work piece snugly

against the edge fence (the xed individ-ual MFS prole that is clamped to yourtable top). Make a cut taking off just a bitso you now know you have a reallysquare corner. Flip the board end for endso the same edge is against the edge

fence, set your rectangle tothe desired length of cut andslide the work piece intoplace as shown in the phototo the left. When you make

this cut you know you willhave two 90 degree angleswith the length exactly whatyou want it to be.

This is the same principle asusing a sliding table indus-trial table saw. Since youcalibrated your guide rail tothe xed edge fence and aresliding a known square rec-

tangle to act as the lengthstop, you know your cuts willbe bang on straight (thanks

to the Festool guide rail and saw), withperfect 90 degree corners (thanks to theindividual prole that you calibrated to beat 90 degrees to the guide rail) and ex-actly to the length you need (thanks tothe ruler marks on the MFS proles).

Note one other thing in this photo. I have

my work piece set on top of a couple ofsacricial scraps of thin plywood. That iswhere the saw kerf is going to go, not intomy table top. Using this practice I neverneed to be concerned about where I hap-pen to set the guide rail table side sup-ports. I just put them wherever it is mostconvenient for the cuts I need to make.

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Cut line


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Now we can make the cut as shown be-low. Wear ear protection, use the Festool

dust collector (the CT33 shown below thetable behind me) and make sure youhave the right blade mounted for the cutyou are about to make.

With the TS line of circular saws it is sofast and easy to change blades that therenever is a reason to force a cross cutblade to make a rip or to use a rip bladeto try to do a clean cross cut.

A couple of other things to note. In thissequence of photos the cut I am about tomake is on stock that is thicker than the16mm thickness of the MFS proles. Asa result the stock itself supports the guiderail and keeps it from exing down. If youneed to cut stock that is thinner than16mm add sacricial spacer stock like theplywood I use either below (much pre-ferred) or above the work piece so theguide rail is supported across the fullwidth of the cut.

If you plan to work on relatively smallerwork pieces, say up to around 700mm

long (27 1/2), having the xed side ex-truded piece back 60mm from the cut

edge of the guide rail will re-sult in the 30 marks liningup as shown before and will

provide good support for therectangle to move over thisrange. For longer workpieces it works best to movethe xed side extrusion backfurther away from the lead-ing edge of the guide rail sothe MFS rectangle will bewell supported when pulledback more than 700mm orso.

With this set up it doesn ! tmatter whether you use oneMulti-Function Table or twoor more joined together.

You don ! t need to worry about the factoryguide rail support stops. They have to beremoved to attach two or more MFTs to-gether side to side anyway. No matterwhere you set the guide rail, since youare calibrating everything to it, you can

get perfectly square cuts from any posi-tion on any number of tables.

For all of your normal cross cuts this setup is fast, reliable and repeatable. Itdoesn ! t matter whether you need a dozenpieces all the same size or a dozenpieces all different sizes. You have thework piece referenced at 90 degrees tothe cut line by the xed MFS side extru-sion and the length determined by the

moveable MFS rectangle acting as yourlength depth stop.

Cutting very narrow strips that are all ex-actly the same width is also easy so longas the length of the strips is shorter thanthe length of the guide rail. The MFS rec-tangle under the guide rail is now going

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to act as your rip fence. For longer ripsturn the rectangle so the long edge isparallel with the guide rail to properlysupport the work piece if you need to.

If you need narrow strips that are longerthan the length of the table, you can jointhe two tables end to end in-stead of side to side. Thatway you can use a longerguide rail, or join two or moreto make up a longer guiderail. You may also want tomake a larger rectangle fromthe available longer MFS ex-trusions so your work piece

is well supported along thelength of the cut.

As the length of cut increases, the requirementfor care and precision inyour set up increasesdramatically. Once the cutlength exceeds the lengthof a 1080 MFT I suggest instead that you use the story stick

method outlined in an upcoming section.

Before starting to cut these narrow strips,rst move the MFS rectangle back out ofthe way and make a rip to straighten oneedge of the work piece. Once you knowyou have a perfectly straight edge youcan place that edge against the fence(the leading edge of the MFS rectanglethat is under the guide rail) and know

that your rst and all subsequent rip cutswill be exactly parallel with that edge.

I nd it easy with this set up to rapidlymake repeat rips to get a bunch of narrowstrips and can ! t measure any difference inwidth from one end to the other or fromone strip to another. All are the same

size. I always clamp the work piece tothe table so it can ! t move which wouldspoil this accuracy. When the work piecebecomes too narrow to safely clampdown it is also too narrow to safely cut

into more strips.

In this photo you can see the set up (theDC hose, saw power cord and the out-

side splinter guard have been removedfor clarity). The rectangle was movedback 5mm from the edge of the guide rail.The work piece is cut straight and then

butted against the leading edge of therectangle and clamped down. Notice thatI have the work piece on top of a sacri-cial hunk of thin plywood to bring it up toa bit beyond the 16mm thickness of theMFS proles so the guide rail will sit aton the work piece without deecting

downward. In this photo the rst thin stripis about half way cut off.

Since the cut off piece is under the guiderail and the remainder of the work pieceis in front of the guide rail clamped to thetable, cutting these narrow strips is inher-ently safe. With guided rail sawing the

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saw blade is turning away from you andis held by the uncut portion of the workpiece until after the leading edge of theblade passes the far end of the workpiece. With the blade set to cut just a

couple of millimeters deeper than thethickness of the work piece, the cut offpiece is only exposed to that smallamount of blade travel and the cut offpiece is trapped from above so it cannotbe lifted off of the table. If the cut offpiece does get trapped between thefence and the blade, it will be thrownaway from you but usually is secured bythe rubber on the bottom of the guide rail.

On a traditional table saw it is just the re-verse. The blade is rotating towards youso the trapped portion of the cut off is freeto be thrown up and back at you, a situa-tion called kickback that nearly every-one who has used a conventional tablesaw to cut narrow strips against a fencehas experienced. This is a far more dan-gerous situation than using the Festool

MFS fence and Festool guide rail to makethese thin strip rip cuts.

Here you can see three thin strips all5mm wide, safely and quickly cut fromthe work piece on top of the guide rail

behind them, this done with no kick backand no ngers in harm ! s way.

One of the nicest things about this MFSrectangle sliding against a stationary

MFS prole set up is that you can recon-gure it on a moment ! s notice and rees-tablish the right angle relationship be-tween the leading edge of the guide railand the MFS rectangle acting as a ripfence or as a length stop in less than aminute, no matter where you set theguide rail. For example, the whole set upcould have been moved further down onthe table to more fully support the workpiece, but I nd clamping the work piece

usually does the job even with the set upthis far towards one edge of the table(s).

You can take down and transport theMFS extrusions as a stack of 80mm by16mm by whatever length componentsand do the whole set up in an off sitework place or can leave the set up justlike it is for repeated in work shop or stu-

dio use. The V track nuts, fastenersand other MFS system components

are very small and easily stored ortransported in a Festool Systainer orSortainer.

The MFS is certainly one way to un-lock the full potential of Festoolguided rail cutting.

Use this set-up for routing aswell

Just cutting pieces to exact size is notwhere the usefulness of this set upstops. You can also rout joints such as

square shouldered tenons to quicklymake rail and stile components, or youcan rout precisely established slidingdovetails or dados. You also can quicklyrout matching dovetail or dado slots ex-

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actly the same distance from two ends ofa work piece by simply moving the rec-tangle to establish the desired cut line onone end, make the cut, reverse the workpiece and make the other cut.

Remember, with Festool guided rail rout-ing it doesn ! t matter which way you movethe router since the guide rail will holdagainst in-thrust or out-thrust forces.

Machining clean tenons

Just take all the pieces that are to havethe tenons and stack them togetheraligned with the xed MFS side extrusion.

I still like to add a side clamp such as theFestool clamping element 488030 tomake sure nothing moves.

Move the the MFS rectangle towards theguide rail to establish the exact lengthyou want the tenons to be. Set the sawblade to cut down into the work piece thedepth you want the shoulder to be. Makeone pass cutting the shoulder in all of thepieces at one time. Rotate them

and make a second pass to cutthe other side of the shoulder. Ifyou want the tenon to behaunched, rotate the pieces upon edge, place the guide rail ontop and make the third pass. Ro-tate and make the fourth pass toestablish haunches on bothedges.

To remove the remainder of thetenon you will use your Festoolrouter with a at bottom bit. Un-like the saw blade which cutszero clearance to the front edgeof the guide rail, you need to ad-

just the router and slide to establish thedesired cut line to be in front of the guide

rail so as not to tear up the zero clear-ance rubber edge.

I like to set the router so the center of thecut is 20mm in front of the guide rail.

There is a convenient center mark on thebase of Festool routers so it is easy andfast to make that alignment. If you use a20mm diameter router bit, the edge of thecut will be 10mm in front of and parallelwith the guide rail. That makes it easy toset the fence to remove the rest of thetenon with the router.

You can skip the part about making a sawblade cut to establish the shoulders of thetenons, but usually cutting them just withthe router will leave a bit of fuzz, and onsome woods may result in a bit of tear outon the shoulders.

A quick additional routing example

The next few photos show the MFS com-ponents utilized to quickly make a smallstand with a shelf, half back and drawer.

To make it easier to see, I have pre-nished all the components, shown hereand in the next several photos.

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I took the time to rst band the mapletop with bloodwood all the way aroundas well as on the front of the shelf. Youcan see (photo previous page) the un-derside of the top with its two sliding

dovetails to receive the two sides (tothe left of the top in photo). The sideshave two horizontal sliding dovetails,one which holds the shelf (to the rear inthe photo) and one which holds thedrawer slide (the bloodwood pieces tothe back right). There is a third, verti-cal, sliding dovetail that receives the

half back (just to the rear of the top) thatseals the drawer area and adds lateralstiffness to the piece.

Above it is partially assembled so youcan see what it will look like. The sidesslide into the dovetail groves on the under

side of the top, the shelf slides into thetwo sides, the drawer guides slide intothe two sides below the shelf and the halfback (shown here in front of the partialassembly) will slide up from the bottomas the locking part of the assembly. Thewhite things on the top are four plasticbolts that will be threaded into the bottom

of the sides at each corner toact as leveling feet and topull the unit visually off of thesurface upon which it stands.

It is easy to see how you canscale up this small stand andadd a bottom and toe kick tomake a multi-drawer chest oradd doors for a cabinet, andso on.

To build it, rst use the set

up we have been discussingto cut all the components tosize. Do the edge banding ifyou wish. Now cut the fe-

male dovetail grooves into theunderside of the top as shown in the pho-

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tos on the right side of the previouspage. I removed the dust collectorhose and cord from the router to makeit easier to see. The router is set to acenterline 20mm forward of the front

edge of the guide rail just as we talkedabout earlier.

Note that this cut is stopped at thefront so you need to set a stop on theguide rail as shown (previous page).Since the Festool guide rail holds therouter against both in-thrust and out-thrust loads, you can cut in either di-rection as is required for these twocuts. Also, note the clamping element

which holds the work piece to theedge or side fence for stability.

Make the rst cut, reverse the top pieceend for end without altering the MFS setup, and rout the second cut. You aredone with the top.

In making a piece like this, after you cutthe two grooves in the top, lay the shelfpiece down with an edge on each grooveto make sure your shelf is exactly thesame length as the centerline to center-

line distance between the two groovesyou just cut in the top. If using a standardsuch as the one I use where the workpieces are 20mm thick and the DTgrooves are 10mm deep, the shelf with itsmale DT on each end will need to line up

with the centerline of the the two sideswhich is the centerlines of the twogrooves you just cut into the underside ofthe top.

Now it is time to cut the three dovetailgrooves in each side. The photo leftshows cutting the vertical groove whichwill receive the half back. Notice the stopso that groove only goes as far as the

shelf groove. The already cut other sideis shown so it is a bit easier totell what is going on. Thephoto above shows cutting thetwo horizontal DT grooves.Since the shelf DT passes allthe way across the sides, noguide rail stop is needed to limitthe travel of the router. The DTfor the drawer slides is stoppedat the groove for the back.

All of the male DT ! s I cut on ei-ther a router table or on a horizontalrouter jig I made that ts onto the side ofa Festool Multi-Function Table. That jig isshown in the appendix to this manual.

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Earlier I said one of my favorite set upswas this use of the MFS rectangle andxed side extrusion as a very accurate ripfence or depth stop to cut work pieces aslarge as the guide rail you are using. But,

it is not the only such set up.Let ! s next move to using the MFS com-ponents as story sticks to accurately lo-cate a guide rail whether the guide rail isplaced freely on a work piece or held bythe table side brackets.

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Using the MFS components to accurately locatethe guide rail to be paral-

lel with and the desireddistance away from theedge of a work piece Another common set up where the MFSearns it stripes as a valuable addition toFestool guided rail cutting and routing iswhere you want to establish a cut linethat is a precisedistance awayfrom the existingback edge of awork piece.Normally youwould simplymeasure out thedesired distanceon both ends ofthe work pieceand then manu-ally set the lead-ing edge of theguide rail to yourmarks by eye.

This can be veryaccurate for one piece, butaccuracy is dependent on aclean narrow mark, goodlight so you can see thosemarks, and an eye heldperpendicular above to the guide rail soyou can accurately place the guide rail onthose marks. If you are only going to cutone piece to that dimension, usually youcan get close enough this way, but, if youwant multiple pieces that are all exactlythe same size, there is too much room forerror relying on the measure, mark andalign visually approach.

This is where the next use of the MFSextrusions can be of invaluable service.Since the 200mm, 400mm, 700mm and1000mm extrusions all have metric rulermarks along one edge, you can quickly

use them as a very accurate story stick.For hundreds of years craftspersons haveused marks on a piece of wood (called astory stick) to do repetitive layout work.In more recent times sliding stops andruler marked edges were added to makethese story sticks faster to set up anduse.

If youcalibratethe zeromarkedend ofone ofthe MFSextru-sions tothe zeroclear-ance

rubberlip on theguide railyou canthen usea simple

stop to set the de-sired length of cutand the story stickbecomes the way

to set the guide rail a precise distance

away from one edge of the work piece.This is the same principle Festool useswith their shelf hole drilling xture. In thatcase two short story sticks are providedalong with a lock to t over the hat sec-tion on the guide rail on one end and an

24

MFS extrusions with shop madesaddles and stops set to positionthe guide rail for a 630mm cut

630mm mark on MFS extrusions pro-duces 630 line of cut for guide rail


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adjustable spring loaded pin to use as anedge reference at the other end.

For our purpose I suggest a couple ofsimple shop made guide rail registration

saddles and a couple of shop made slid-ing stops to hook over the back edge ofthe work piece. Both are shown below.

By calibrating to the front edge of theguide rail you can then use the rulermarkings to set the back edge stops toexactly the same measurement time aftertime.

Place the guide rail down on the workpiece, place the guide rail registrationsaddles on the guide rail and move theguide rail until the back edge stops comermly up against the back edge of the

work piece as is shown in thephoto on the previous page.That will position your guiderail a very precise distanceaway from that edge on bothends of the work piece soyou can cut a clean line thatis about as close to parallelwith the other edge of thework piece as you can get.And, you can do it on work

piece after work piece tocome out with multiple partsthat are as close to exactlythe same size as you arelikely to be able to measure.

The guide rail saddles andback edge stops shown I made fromscrap UHMW plastic sheet that I buy inbulk from a wonderful old fashionedhardware store in Bellingham, WA, a fa-

vorite stop whenever we are visiting ourson and his family, but you can makethem just as easily from wood or what-ever you have lying around your shop.

The guide rail registration saddles shownt snugly into the space between the rearT track and the hat shaped ridge thatthe Festool cutting and routing tools slidealong. That space is 32mm wide. I sug-gest you cut your stock a bit wider than

that and then use a router to shave offabout an 8mm high rebate recess oneach side until it ts quite snugly in thatspace. That hat shaped slide is about6.5mm high so 8mm will give good clear-ance. My material happened to be 19mmthick and that works well with the 16mmthickness of the MFS proles.

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Shop made saddle

Shop made stop


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I plowed a 13mm deep groove80mm wide so the saddle tssnugly over the MFS proleand snugly into the space onthe guide rail. That way the

proles will project out behindthe guide rail at very close toa 90 degree angle which willadd to your accuracy.

I then drilled a couple of5.5mm holes in the sides ofthe saddle aligned with thecenter of the side V trackson the MFS extrusions. Slidein a two hole V nut and fas-

ten the saddle with a 5mmmachine screw.

If you use the normally available hard-ware store metric cap head screws, thenyou can use a 4mm Allen key to tightenand loosen all of the 5mm fasteners andthe 3mm Allen key supplied as part of theMFS system for all the 4mm fasteners.

You could also get a bit fancy and usesome form of purchased or shop madequick set 5mm thread handles.

Once the saddles are in place with thescrews still loose, put the saddle onto theguide rail and usea block of woodto bring the endof the MFS extru-sion marked zeroup to be exactlyeven with therubber edge onyour guide rail asshown in thisphoto. Since youcut that rubberedge with your saw and blade the rsttime you used it this procedure will cali-

brate your story stick to your saw, blade,and guide rail.

With the edges aligned tighten the sidescrews on the saddle so you can removethe MFS prole and saddle from theguide rail and replace it, always keepingthe front edge of the guide rail alignedwith the zero mark on the prole. If you

want to be able to remove and replacethe saddles without reregistering them toyour guide rail, just slide another V nutin place and lock it down against the Vnut you use to secure the saddle.

Festool offers a small bag of Vnuts and set screws as partnumber 493235.

You can use just one prole ifyou wish, but two will be fasterand far more accurate. If you doplan to use two, then calibratethe other one to your saw, blade,and guide rail the same way.

You can use any of the MFS pro-le lengths you wish. I nd the one meter(1000mm) length the handiest. If I want

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to cut off a longer piece than that will al-low, I attach another MFS prole to theend of this one using two of the prole

joining V nuts. The second prole zeromark will set against the 1000mm mark

so it is easy to set precise measurementsbeyond one meter.

To make the back edge stops I used thesame 19mm scrap UHMW and plowed ashallow dado in the side a fraction over16mm wide. This will allow the back

edge stop to register cleanly along theedge of the MFS prole with a clearlyreadable shoulder to align with the de-sired measurement mark.

I nd 40mm high about right with the16mm dado set down about 4mm fromthe top edge. That allows the lower edge

of the stop to fall below the top edge ofthe work piece so I can get a nice cleanhook action to catch the back edge of thework piece as shown above.

Those back edge stops are secured tothe MFS side V track with 5mm ma-

chine screws threaded into the two holeV nuts.

As we discussed above, in use, set bothstops to the desired length of cut, place

the saddles on the guide rail, and movethe guide rail and story sticks until thestops fall over the back edge of the workpiece -- slick, fast, highly accurate andvery repeatable.

You will nd that in use both of thesemethods of positioning theguide rail relative to thework piece (the MFS rectangle and these story

sticks) will allow you toreach a level of accuracyand repeatability that ismost likely far beyondwhat you have been ableto achieve using themeasure, mark, and aligntechnique.

While the MFS rectangle asa vernier scale does requirethe guide rail to be mountedon a Multi-Function Table,the story sticks do not. Ei-ther way both of these tech-

niques employing the accuracy of theFestool MFS extruded proles offer a fastway to make one cut or dozens that areall the same.

It also doesn ! t matter whether you aremaking rip cuts or cross cuts or whetherthe cut off pieces are narrow or wide,both techniques work equally as well.

Best of all, since you always calibrate offof your saw, your blade, and your guiderail, you don ! t have to worry about howstraight or square your table is or whetherthings change on you from one worksession to the next.

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Back edge of work piece


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Now let s turn our attention to using the MFSsystem in advanced rout-

ing applications Everything we have talked about in termsof aligning the Festool guide rails for cut-ting work pieces applies equally to routingoperations as well.

Most all routing operations require somemeans of positioning the work piece androuter bit in a desired alignment while ei-ther the work piece is moved past the

router (as in a router table application) orwhile the router is moved past the workpiece.

The former is accomplished either by thework piece being held against the routertable fence or by a bearing on the bitwhich rides on the work piece, a templateor a pattern. The latter is accomplishedeither by a fence that is attached to therouter base, or by the router being guided

by a Festool guide rail, or by a bearing onthe bit which rides against the work piece,a template or a pattern.

Since this manual is all about techniquesusing Festool products, we will skip thediscussion on router tables and coveronly guided rail routing here. I will as-sume you know how to set up and handleyour Festool router safely so those basicswill not covered here.

If you have any question about yourability to set up or handle your routersafely, please do not proceed with thismanual. Move instead to literature,videos, or training programs designedfor that purpose.

Since most of you have experience withfree hand routing using bearing guidedbits riding against the edge of the workpiece (such as when putting a roundededge on a shelf or table top,) I won ! t

spend any time here on how to do that.Instead we are going to concentrate onadvanced guided rail routing, patternrouting, and template routing operations,especially those for which the FestoolMFS is ideally suited.

First, let ! s clarify some denitions. Peo-ple often use the terms template andpattern interchangeably. I don ! t. I usethe term template to mean a way of

guiding a router bit to cut a female recessin the face of a work piece. It can also beused to cut a (nearly) matching maleshape in inlay material to be inserted intothat recess if you wish. By pattern Imean a way of guiding a router bit to pro-duce an area that mimics the area underor beside the pattern while other areas ofthe work piece are routed away.

By my denitions one would use a pat-

tern to establish and duplicate curves ontable legs, for example. In that same ta-ble we might want to inlay a different ma-terial as a decorative accent. That wouldbe done using a template.

Offset Routing

To fully appreciate all that can be doneusing templates and patterns, we need toexplore the notion of offsets, guide bush-

ings, and bearings as they relate to guid-ing the router bit.

Guide bushings t onto the router baseconcentrically located around the routerbit. On routers such as the Festool 1010,concentricity is established via a coneshaped mandrel which is placed in the

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collet. The guide bushing is placed overthe cone shape which holds it concentricto the collet as the guide bushing is tight-ened down. On the Festool 1400 theguide bushings snap into place, auto-

matically being held concentric to thecollet by the tangs and receivers ma-chined into the guide ring and router baseas pictured below.

The outer edge of the guide bushing fol-lows the pattern or template to producethe desired cut. If the guide bushing is,say, 20mm in diameter and the router bitis 10mm in diameter, then one edge ofthe cut will be 5mm away from the edge

of the pattern or template and the otheredge of the cut will be 15mm away.

This relationship is always such that onecut edge is away from the edge of thepattern or template by half of the differ-ence in diameter between the (outsidediameter of the) guide bushing and thediameter of the router bit. The other cutedge is that plus the diameter of therouter bit since the router bit will plow agroove in the work piece its own diameterwide.

Knowing this, one can use the samerouter bit and template and, by changingguide bushings, can cut both a femalerecess and a matching male insert whichwill exactly t the recess everywhere ex-

29

Removing the 1010 baseplate.Guide bushing and centeringmandrel in foreground

Guide bushing centered overmandrel and tightened down on1010

Guide bushings simply snap inplace properly centered on 1400


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cept in corners where theguide bushing used to cutthe female recess will pro-duce radiused cornerswhile the male piece cut will

have sharp corners. One orthe other must be handtrimmed for the male to tperfectly into the female re-cess. This is usually not anissue and can be done eas-ily.

In our example, if we usedthe 20mm diameter guidebushing to cut the male and

a 40mm guide bushing tocut the female, they wouldt together perfectly. The 40mm guidebushing with a 10mm bit will plow agroove that is 15mm away from the edgeof the template and 10mm wide. Wewould route out all the interior leaving theprole of the female recess that is 15mm

smaller than our template.

When we cut the matching male we justput on the 20mm guide bushing. This

time the groove will be5mm away from the edge of the templateon the side nearest the template and15mm away on the side furthest awayfrom the template, exactly the size andshape of our female recess.

Using bearings on the routerbit instead of guide bushingson the router base will pro-duce a similarly predictableresult. The photo to the leftshows (left to right) a topbearing bit the same size asthe cutter (called a ush trimbit), a top bearing bit smallerthan the cutter (called a re-bate cutter), and a bottombearing bit the same size asthe cutter.

If the template will be heldbetween the router base andthe work piece (as in mostplunge cut applications and

many router table applications), the bear-ing needs to be mounted on the shankend of the bit like the one on the right. Ifthe work piece is held between the router

30

Sample of 1400 guide bush-ings in different sizes


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base and the template (as in mostthrough cut applications), then thebearing needs to be mounted on thecutter end of the router bit (the left mostbit in the photo on the previous page).

In either case, if the bearing is largerthan the router bit, it will act like theguide bushing in our examples above,and the same relationships will exist.The work piece will be machined to besmaller than the inside of the templateby one half of the difference in diameterbetween the router bit and the bearing.

If, on the other hand, the bearing issmaller than the router bit, as is the bitpictured in the center of the photo onthe previous page, then the work piecewill be machined to be larger than the in-side of the template, again by one half of

the difference in diameter between the bitand the bearing. Doing this will be un-dercutting the template so use a thinscrap between the template and workpiece to avoid scarring the template.

There is still a third way of establishingthe offset between the inside of the tem-plate and the line of cut and that is

through the use of what arecalled snap on guiderings. This is a two pieceguide bushing set. Theguide bushing itself is onediameter and a machined

ring is fashioned which hasa hole in it the same di-ameter as the guide bush-ing but with a larger outsidediameter.

For any given router bit,the difference in the diameter of the guide bushing and guide ring required to make a maleand female cut from thesame template t together is twice the diame-

ter of the router bit.

So, whether working in inch size bits,bushings, and rings, or with metricsize bits, bushings, and rings, you

31

1400 guide bushings and rings in inch sizes mountedon a 1400 universal guide bushing adapter

1010 guide bushing and ring set in metricsizes designed around 4mm, 6mm and8mm bits. 8mm carbide insert bit shown


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want to nd pairs where the differencein diameter between the bushing andthe ring is twice the diameter of therouter bit itself.

These pairs will cut female recesses ofany shape with matching males that tinto those recesses which will besmaller than the template by a knownamount, which I refer to as the offset.

The offset from the side of the template to the edge of the inlay is half thediameter of the largest bushing or ringplus half the diameter of the bit.

If you are starting with a male shapethat you want to t into a female recess, the template needs to be largerthan the male by this offset amount. Ifyou are starting with a female shapethat you want to cut a male to t youwill wind up with a female recess andmatching male that ts that is smallerthan the original female by the offsetamount.

As you begin to explore the fascinatingworld of template and pattern routing it isvery important to understand these rela-tionships. I know it seems a bit confusingat rst, but hang in there and it will slowlybegin to sink in.

Let ! s take a look at the very capable met-ric set from Festool. It is not a regularcatalog item but was developed for theooring installers who needed to do vari-ous kinds of fancy inlays in their oors.This is the metric set shown at the bottomof the previous page. It only ts the 1000and 1010 routers, not the 1400. Thereare lots of inch sets available that t theuniversal guide bushing adapter for the1400 from a variety of manufacturers.

The guide bushing on the Festool setshown has a diameter of 10.6mm. Thereare ve rings marked, in increasing di-ameter 4, 6-4, 8s, 6 and 8l. You can usea 4, 6 or 8mm bit. With a 4mm bit you

can get male/female matching pairs withvarious offsets by using the bushingalone with ring 4, ring 4 with ring 8s andring 8s with ring 8l. Likewise you can usea 6mm bit and get matching pairs with theguide bushing and ring 6-4 or with ring 6-4 and ring 8l. With an 8mm bit the com-binations are guide bushing and ring 8sor ring 4 and ring 8l. Each produces adifferent offset so you can select whichbest ts your situation. See the table in

Appendix B for details.I like the metric set for use with the MFSproles since they are both denominatedin metric sizes so the math is easy.

The inch denominated set shown in com-bination with the 1400 universal guidebushing adapter is designed to work with1/8, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2 and 3/4 bits. Youcan probably nd others as well.

If using the 3/4 bit, bushing and ring setthe bushing diameter is 7/8 and the ringdiameter is 2 3/8 so the offset is going tobe 3/8 plus 1 3/16 or 1 9/16. You cutthe female recess with the 2 3/8 diame-ter ring installed and the male with justthe 7/8 diameter of the guide bushing sothe male will just t into the female re-cess.

These snap on guide bushing sets pro-duce the same outcome as using two dif-ferent guide bushings but are a bit fasterto use with the 1010 and most other rout-ers since you don ! t need to change guidebushings. With the 1400, changing guidebushings is so fast that it is a toss up, butthe range of available sizes is limited.

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Using the Festool MFSproles as an adjustablerectangular router tem-

plateSo far we have only looked at the MFS interms of using its various components asfences or guide rail positioning aids. Ifyou assemble four of the MFS extrusionsas a rectangle with the ruler markings onthe inside it now be-comes an adjustablerectangular routertemplate. It is easy to

adjust to whateversize rectangle youwant.

As we will see in amoment it is just aseasy to change thesize of the template todo offset routing as itis to leave the tem-plate the same size

and change bearingsor guide bushings orguide bushing andring sets. Either workswell for most applica-tions.

Let ! s start with acommonly requestedexample. Let ! s recessa router plate into the top of a Festool

Multi-Function Table. I!

m not going to ac-tually cut into my tables because I al-ready have large industrial router tables.Instead I will cut into a piece of 3/4 mdfwhich we will pretend is a Festool MFTtop plate.

To set a router plate into a table surface,the male already exists (the plate itself)so we just need to t it into a proper fe-male recess. We need to rout a groovethe thickness of the router plate and ex-

actly the same size as the router plate.Then we need to cut clear through thetable top surface leaving about a 10mmto 15mm lip all around to support therouter plate. The router plate picturedbelow with the router still attached is de-signed for a lip that is 11mm deep.

Begin bysetting theselected

router plateat on thetable top.Assemblefour MFSextrusionsinto a rec-tangle withthe rulermarkingson the in-

side .Place thisrectangleover therouter plateand adjustthe rectan-gle to justt the

router plateas is shown in this photo.

That is all it takes to make a template thatis exactly the same size as the routerplate.

Now, place the rectangular template you just made on top of the intended workpiece positioned just where you want it.

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Draw a line around the in-side so you can put it backin that same spot. Alsodraw a line a to form a lip abit wider than you want.

This is to allow you to cutout the majority of the cen-ter with a jig saw or recipsaw before you do any ofthe routing. As you can seefrom the photo below, itdoesn ! t need to be a carefulor even straight cut. All youare doing is removing thebulk of the material to re-duce the amount of work

the router bit has to dowhen you next rout theactual inside edges of thework piece.

Put the template backaligned with the pencil lineyou drew a moment ago.Mount a guide bushingand straight cut bit sizedto produce the width of lip

you want. Rememberhow the guide bushing willride on the inside edge ofthe template and hold the

inside edge of the bit awayfrom the template by halfthe diameter of the guidebushing less half the di-ameter of the bit.

For this router plate, areally beat up unit that hasbeen in use daily for sev-eral years, the lip needs to

be about 1/2. A 40mmguide ring snapped intothe Festool 1400 routershown in the lower pictureand 10mm router bit willproduce a 15mm lip, a bitwider than 1/2 but cer-tainly close enough to 1/2to work well.

I placed scrap pieces of

plywood under the workpiece to hold it off of thesurface of the multi-function table so as not toscar it up. Set the depthof cut to just clear the bot-tom of the work piece.Follow the template with

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Draw lines to mark the inset loca-tion and a rough line a bit widerthan the lip you want

Cut out the center with a jigsaw or recip saw

Use a guide bushing andstraight bit to cleanly trim therough inside edges of the cut


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the guide bush-ing moving in acounter clock-wise direction.Go slowly as you

are removing alot of nasty mdfmaterial, andcarefully guardagainst tippingthe router. Besure to use dustcollection withyour router andwear ear protec-tion.

The result will bea very clean,smooth cut-out,in this case30mm smallerthan the routerplate all around, so as to form the 15mmlip we were after.

The next step is to mount the ush trim

bit the same size as the corner radius onthe router plate, if you have one that size.Since the bearing on the ush trim bit is

going to ride directly on the inside edgesof the template, select a bit with a cutlength that will make the depth of cut youwant while keeping the bearing within the16mm thickness of the MFS proles thatform the template.

Once everything is set and the dust col-

lection is hooked up and you have thedepth of cut set to the depth you want thelip to be, move slowly around the insideof the template again in a counter clock-wise direction. This time you are reallyremoving a lot of material as this is a fulldepth, full width of lip cut. Let the routerdo the work and just guide it along keep-

ing the base at on theMFS proles. At 80mmwide it is easy to perchthe router there withouttipping so long as you

exercise even modestcare.

To make this cut I usedthe Festool 1010 routeras the ush trim bit hada 1/4 shank bit andthat router happened toalready have the 1/4collet installed.

I have heard somequestion the robustnessof this small Festoolrouter but I surely don ! tknow why. It made thisfull depth, full width cutwithout a whimper and,

as you can see, it did a great job. I have

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Inside cut with 1400 router,straight bit and guide bushing

Lip cut with 1010 router, noguide bushing and ush trim bit


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never had a 1000 or 1010 router bogdown no matter what I was routing.

All you need to do now is just drop therouter plate into place and start using it.Total time? The rst time you do it, it willtake you 20 to 30 minutes start to nish,after that no more than 15 minutes all be-cause the MFS proles make a rst ratetemplate in a hurry and one that sits atand secure on top of yourwork piece.

The photos here don ! t show itbut I held the work piece, theplywood that held the workpiece off of the table top, andthe template, all three withone Festool F clampmounted from below the tableengaged into the bottom Ttrack on one of the MFS pro-les. That way there wasnothing in the way of therouter and nothing shifted onme either.

You can make a similar tem-plate for applications like this

with scrap sticks, but doingso is usually not as fast,not as safe, nor as accu-rate.

The picture below showseverything, the router platewe started with, the MFStemplate, the Festoolclamps that held everythingsecure, one of the routerswe used, the dust collec-tion, the guide bushing andstraight bit, and, stillmounted in the router, theush trim bit along with the

nished work piece itself.If you look closely at the picture to the leftyou will see that I did not have a 1 di-ameter ush trim bit of the correct lengthto match the 1/2 radiuses used on thisrouter plate so the radius cut is a bitsmaller. This doesn ! t hurt anything anddoesn ! t effect how snugly the router plateis held so it would not bother me. But, if

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you want it perfect, get a ush trim bit thatmatches the radius on your router plate.

There are a few things to watch out for.First, don ! t try to get the template to be

too tight a t to the router plate. Mostush trim bits are really a few thousandssmaller than the bearing so the bit won ! ttear up the template or pattern. Thatmeans that the actual cut-out will be afew thousands smaller than the routerplate as well. So allow a little extra roomall around when you set up your MFSproles to make the template.

Next, be careful that the ush trim bit isthe right length. If it is too short, the colletmight impact the template. If too long,the bearing might not ride securely on theinside edge of the template.

Make sure nothing can move before youturn on the router. The bits are projectedwell below the bottom plate on the therouter so if anything goes wrong and therouter is yanked from your hands, there isa lot of spinning bit that will try to nd you.

Don ! t lift the router off of the templatewhile the bit is still spinning. If you do,you likely will take a hunk out of the MFSprole which could make for a less thanstellar cut the next time you want to usethat prole as a template.

Don ! t let the router tip. There is no wayto provide anti-tip support for these cutsso your hands holding the router basedirectly onto the at surface of the MFSproles is your only guarantee that notipping could spoil the cut.

You also can easily make one or moreller plates to cover the hole if you wantto. Select another ush trim router bitthat is long enough to cut clear throughthe thickness of the intended male yet still

keep its bearing securely along the insideedge of the template.

Use the ruler marks to move the templateout the diameter of this router bit. The

width and the length must be increasedby this amount. If the ller plate is slightlysmall, it won ! t hurt anything. If it isslightly too large, it won ! t t so err on theside of being a bit small.

Secure the male work piece to a sacri-cial scrap with double sided sticky tape.When it is cut completely out, you do notwant it to move over and hit the still spin-ning router bit.

Place the adjusted template over themale, set the depth of cut to just clear thebottom of the male work piece, and routin a counter clockwise direction as be-fore. This time it is imperative that youhold the bearing tightly against the insideedge of the template all the way aroundthe cut. If the router drifts towards thecenter of the template you will ruin yourmale work piece.

Another way to make the male is to usethe original router base as a template andrun the bearing around the outside edgeof it to create an exact duplicate. Holdthe router base to the top of the workpiece with double sided sticky tape.

If the router base is clean on the bottomside, you can rout from above. If thereare things sticking up, then rout from thebottom with a ush trim bit with the bear-ing on the top of the bit and mounted inan inverted router in the router table.

Either way you can make as many per-fect duplicate ller plates as you wish.

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Open eld inlay workOne of the fastest way I know to addvalue to your furniture is to do open eldinlay work. This means inserting inlaysinto recesses cut in the surface of yourwork pieces. A nice inlay on the top orsides of a table or chest can add 50%,100% or evenmore to theprice, yet ittakes far lesstime to do theinlay than tobuild thepiece in therst place.That is theeconomicpower andleverage youcan experi-ence by em-ploying theFestool MFSsystem thisway.

By now it should be obvious that openeld inlay is done in just the same wayyou did the router plate insert in the top ofyour Multi-Function Table. The only dif-ference is that you will clear out all of theinterior of the female recess at the samedepth of cut setting. Everything else re-mains the same. The photo shows a freeform wave inlay made from ame red-wood burl going into a walnut lid for a wallhanging desk.

In this case I am doing an inlay on an in-lay so, while one edge is tight, the otheris loose so I can t the smaller templateshown to add the second inlay before glu-ing in the rst. Later in this section wewill talk about multiple inlay on inlay work

and I usually will recommend gluing eachinlay before proceeding with the next.When you get experienced enough, youcan try doing it before the glue sets up,but practice the other way rst.

To start the process, either adhere theinlay material that is to become the maleinsert to a sacricial piece of plywood or

mdf, or, ifyou have aband sawlargeenough, youcan cut themale shape

and thenresaw it offof solidstock. Thatis what I liketo do sincethat allowsme to bookmatch if Iam doingmultiple in-

lays on thesame surface.

For this free form inlay there is no book

matching, but, as you can see from thefollowing pictures, I still cut the male from

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a solid piece and then did aresaw cut on the band saw tofree it.

The female was cut into thewalnut using the same tem-plate and offset guide bushingwe talked about earlier. Inthis case I was using the Fes-tool metric guide ring set you

can see in the photos aboveand to the right.

The Festool Deltexsander and a chiselmake short work outof cleaning up thefree form routing outof the female groovewhich always leavesa bunch of spots you

missed with therouter.

I like to rout thegroove which forms the male componenta bit deeper than it needs to be plus thewidth of the band saw kerf plus another2mm or so just to be safe. For example,

my carbide band saw bladeproduces a 2mm kerf. If I planon 4mm thick inlays, I will setmy Festool router to a depth ofcut around 8mm or so to cut

the grooves for the male inlaypiece. I will cut the female re-cess to be 4mm deep. Afterthe male piece is glued inplace, it is sanded ush withthe surrounding surface.

If I am doing bookmatched inlays, I cutthe male deepenough to resaw offtwo identical pieces.The book matchedsurfaces get gluedwith the commonsurface betweenthem placed up toshow the book match

clearly.

Most customers won ! t notice the bookmatching when they rst look at the piecebut when their eyes do discover this de-

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tail, the perceived value of the piece goeseven higher. Sometimes it is an excitedphone call a week or two later and some-times it is a gasp on rst inspecting thepiece. Either way the value proposition

they experience is dramatically in-creased.

Inlays nearly always look best if the inlaypiece has grain that runs the same direc-tion as the surrounding piece into whichthe female recess was cut. That willminimize any expansion differential is-sues as well. If your aesthetics call forcross grain orientation of the inlay piece,you usually won ! t have any problem if the

inlay is 4mm or less in thick-ness and you use a stan-dard woodworking glue.

Don ! t use epoxy or any rigidset glues if you insist oncross grain inlays as youwould be asking for trouble,whether you get it or not.No reason to tempt fate.

Band InlaysBand inlays are where yourun a ribbon or band of inlaymaterial across the face oredge of a piece. To cut thefemale groove on an edgeuse your Festool router withone or two edge guides, arouter table, or a table saw.

In this photo the band inlayis going onto a curved sur-face. I mounted two side fences to myrouter to keep the router centered on theedge of the work piece and to stabilizethe router so there could be no tippingfrom side to side. One quick pass andthe female slot is established.

If the work piece that is to receive the in-lay is at on the edge and you have aFestool Multi-Function Table, a fast wayto make these cuts is to clamp the workpiece to the side of the table with the

edge to receive the inlay ush with thetop of the table. Now use your guide railclamped to the top of the table to guidethe saw or router to make the groove cut.You can use the story sticks made fromthe MFS extrusions and the shop-madesaddles and stops to quickly establish aline of cut that is parallel with and whereyou want it on the edge of the work piece.

Band inlays set in the front edges of the

sides of acabinet andalong thefront andside edgesof the topcan bedone inminutes.They reallyadd a spark

of class tothe piecethat in-creasesvalue be-yond thetime andeffort re-quired toadd them.

One suchexample isshown on the next page. This is a walnutand maple bedroom unit with band inlayalong the front edge of the top.

This piece also features a tricky seg-mented sliding dovetail shelf support sys-

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tem, so, while it is off topic for what weare talking about right now, I will include acouple of photos to show this detail aswell.

This photo shows the segmented slidingdovetail shelf support system cut into thefront of the back (walnut) and the back ofthe front uprights (maple). The sum ofthe lengths of the segments plus thewidth of the shelf is the distance from top

to bottom so no matter how many seg-ments are below or above the shelf, theshelf looks as if it is xed but is really ad-

justable.

The photo above shows a detail of the

un-derside of the thin shelf stiffened by fore-aft sliding dovetails and a lateral that arehidden by the maple uprights.

Directly above is a detail of how the shelfinteracts with the stacked sliding dovetailsegments on the front uprights.

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Here is the nished unit with bandinlay along the front edge of the top


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Now back to band inlays. Band inlayscan also be set in an open eld using theMFS rectangles as templates.

Establish a long narrow rectangle with an

opening the same size as the guide bush-ing you intend to use. Make sure theguide bushing will move easily along thefull length of the inside of the rectangle.A little slop won ! t make much difference,but a too tight area will cause you prob-lems.

Use the angled steel pieces that comewith the MFS to establish the desired off-set from the edges of your work piece.Let ! s say you want to put a 5mm inlayband 20mm in from the edges of the topof a desk or table, for example. Placeone of the angled steel pieces at eachend of the underside of the MFS rectan-gle parallel with the long dimension andas far apart as the shortest side of yourwork piece.

Make sure they are the same distance infrom the edge of the work piece to posi-tion the slot that is the interior of this nar-row rectangle where you want it. You arenext going to set stops to make sure therouter bit stops short of the actual corner.If you were to try to rout band inlays byrunning a router bit with a guide bushingaround the inside edges of a much largerrectangle, the corners would be roundedby the radius of the guide bushing. It isvery difcult to cut the male inlay piecesto t that rounded corner.

Instead we are going to stop the router bitand hand chisel a square corner. Whenwe place the band inlay, we will miterthose corners so the whole thing looksreally professional and clean. A short mi-ter like that in thin material is easy to dosimply by cutting both pieces at the same

time with a razor knife. The actual angleis not important since they will form a per-fect 90 degree corner anyway.

To stop the router in the right place, rst

place your MFS rectangle on an adjoiningside with the stops against that edge.Mark with a pencil the outer edge of theinterior of the rectangle. That is whereyou want to stop the guide bushing whenapproaching that corner.

Now you can position the MFS rectangleon your work piece with the edge stopsagainst the edge and the end of the rec-tangle even with your pencil mark.Clamp it down.

Make the cut a little more than half theway across your work piece. Now un-clamp the MFS and slide it down so theend of the rectangle aligns with the pencilmark at the other end. If you have theedge stops cleanly up against the edge ofyour work piece and have clamped it se-curely, the second part of your band re-cess will align perfectly with the one you

just cut.

Continue around the top of the workpiece the same way to make the grooveall the way around. A little bit of chiselwork will nish the corners square, andyou can easily insert the banding maleinlay pieces.

Use the technique outlined earlier to cutthese narrow strips to exact thickness.Cut them from stock that is a mm or sothicker than the depth of your femalegroove. Glue in the pieces mitering thecorners as discussed and sand every-thing ush once the glue dries.

While this is very easy to do, I recom-mend you practice a bit on scrap piecesbefore you tackle your masterpiece.

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Once you start adding band inlays andopen eld inlays to your work, you willnd many aesthetically pleasing ways tocombine the two. Take your time and doyour set ups carefully and you will be in-

laying like a master in no time.There is one more type of inlay I want tocover. That is where you do multipleoverlapping open eld inlays.

The process is the same. You cut yourrst open eld inlay and glue and sandthe male in place. When the glue setsup, add a second, usually differentlyshaped inlay that overlaps some portionof the rst. Do the same thing again. Cutthe female recess using the MFS as theguide. Change guide bushings or add asnap on ring of the right diameter orchange bearings on your bit to get theright offset to cut the male. Glue thatmale in place and sand it smooth with thesurrounding eld and the rst inlay.

Do as many of these as you like, over-lapping where ever you like. They arefast and easy to do and in pleasing pro-portions can really add value to yourpiece.

A very interesting variant is to do an openeld inlay of a contrasting wood. Thencome back and do another inlay partiallyor fully contained within that rst inlay inthe eld wood. If you keep the grains go-ing in the same direction and do a bit ofcareful selection of colors and grains sothe second inlay closely matches the eldwood, you get a very interesting look thatbafes most as to how this was accom-plished.

If you use a third wood for the second in-lay instead of using the eld wood youcan create a very interesting effect thatlooks like an inlay surrounded by a con-

trasting band and without any corner joints at all. If you want the band to bethe same size all around you will need toplan your work and positioning of theMFS rectangle carefully. The ruler mark-

ings on the proles can really help.Remember how we used one piece ofMFS extrusion as a vernier fence to posi-tion a MFS rectangle as a fence or endstop for cutting? Well, you can do thesame thing to help you position the MFSrectangle you are using as the open eldinlay guide.

Once you have the MFS set where youwant it for the rst inlay, attach two addi-tional MFS proles to the two sides of therectangle using the V nuts in the sidetracks so they extend off over two edgesof the work piece. Use the saddles youmade to t onto the MFS proles to snugup against the edges of the work piece tox the position of the rectangle. That wayyou can reposition the rectangle withgreat accuracy even if you have to re-move these two additional prole pieces

and remount them later.After you nish the rst inlay shrink theMFS rectangle in both directions by thewidth of the desired band. Now remountthe two additional prole pieces, the oneswith the saddles establishing a side ref-erence, and move the saddles by onehalf of the desired band width therebycentering the now smaller rectangle overthe original larger one.

Use the same bit and guide bushing tocut the female recess and you will be leftwith a beautiful contrasting band thatlooks almost impossible to do. Only you,or another MFS user will know how youdid it!

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There is no right orwrong way to assembleth

Documents

MFS Jerry Work