Festool MFS Fence System Instruction Manual page 20

actly the same distance from two ends of
a work piece by simply moving the rec-
tangle to establish the desired cut line on
one end, make the cut, reverse the work
piece and make the other cut.
Remember, with Festool guided rail rout-
ing it doesn't matter which way you move
the router since the guide rail will hold
against in-thrust or out-thrust forces.
Machining clean tenons
Just take all the pieces that are to have
the tenons and stack them together
aligned with the fixed MFS side extrusion.
I still like to add a side clamp such as the
Festool clamping element 488030 to
make sure nothing moves.
Move the the MFS rectangle towards the
guide rail to establish the exact length
you want the tenons to be. Set the saw
blade to cut down into the work piece the
depth you want the shoulder to be. Make
one pass cutting the shoulder in all of the
pieces at one time. Rotate them
and make a second pass to cut
the other side of the shoulder. If
you want the tenon to be
haunched, rotate the pieces up
on edge, place the guide rail on
top and make the third pass. Ro-
tate and make the fourth pass to
establish haunches on both
edges.
To remove the remainder of the
tenon you will use your Festool
router with a flat bottom bit. Un-
like the saw blade which cuts
zero clearance to the front edge
of the guide rail, you need to ad-
just the router and slide to establish the
desired cut line to be in front of the guide
20
rail so as not to tear up the zero clear-
ance rubber edge.
I like to set the router so the center of the
cut is 20mm in front of the guide rail.
There is a convenient center mark on the
base of Festool routers so it is easy and
fast to make that alignment. If you use a
20mm diameter router bit, the edge of the
cut will be 10mm in front of and parallel
with the guide rail. That makes it easy to
set the fence to remove the rest of the
tenon with the router.
You can skip the part about making a saw
blade cut to establish the shoulders of the
tenons, but usually cutting them just with
the router will leave a bit of fuzz, and on
some woods may result in a bit of tear out
on the shoulders.
A quick additional routing example
The next few photos show the MFS com-
ponents utilized to quickly make a small
stand with a shelf, half back and drawer.
To make it easier to see, I have pre-
finished all the components, shown here
and in the next several photos.