Getting a tablesaw #2: Getting a Festool Multifunction table

I also use the TS55 in place of a table saw because of space. I know Festool is sold in Australia as well, and they sell stuffs the U.S. will not receive until much later. One piece I’m really interested in is this Compact Modular System t for the TS55. I don’t know what their international shipping policy is, but a ticket to Australia must be cheaper than to the US. I’ll follow your blog.

-- Thuan

Thusan,
Thank you for your rapid reply.
From Tokyo to LA costs only $300 excluding fuel surcharge. Including that it must be added $200 for one way. Incredible !
But your advise inspired me about buying from Australia. I will try it.

-- Satoru Nakamaru, Japan ---It takes twenty years to make an overnight success. -- And if my English is strange or incorrect, please tell me.

We Festoolians (Festooligans?) make a lot of the MFT, but as much as we like to brag about clamping to the rails and using the holes for alignment and all of that stuff, it seems like you could do an awful lot of the same things by building an angle fence, probably out of a strip of good 1/2” ply, putting your rail on some sort of repeatable holder (the way the MFT has the rail on the hinge), and making up a good accurate square out of 1/2” ply to stand in for the MFT.

I think with some 1/2” “baltic birch” or “appleply” or whatever the high quality ply is in your neck of the woods, a bunch of knobs and maybe some T-track, and a few jigs on your workbench you can have the fence/angle function of the MFT, the ability to do thin repeatable rips that the MFT+MFS gives you, and thus most of the sawing abilities.

You won’t have the grid of holes to stuff bench dogs or blocks into, and you won’t have the sides to run the quick clamps in, but it seems like that’ll keep you going for less.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke

Hope is what we ask for when we’ve exhausted all other options, Satoru.

You still have other options, my friend.

-- Ethan, http://thekiltedwoodworker.com

Dan,
What you suggest always leads me another world. That should be a great advice.
If I can’t get legitimate MFT, I will make a substitution.

Ethan,
Thank you, I will try other ways.

-- Satoru Nakamaru, Japan ---It takes twenty years to make an overnight success. -- And if my English is strange or incorrect, please tell me.

Whoops. I’ll figure out how to use this software… This message erased ‘cause I posted twice.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke

Oh, a quick correction, when I said that stuff about “making an accurate square”, I meant “stand in for the MFS”, not the MFT.

And, on the subject of the MFS, I’ve actually bought one now, but I built a home-made version, and it comes in handy sometimes. Not as easy to clamp as the actual MFS, but still handy.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke