Festool MFS Fence System Instruction Manual page 50

sitional accuracy that you simply cannot
achieve any other way that I know of.
Additionally, positioning the work pieces
together this way makes not only possi-
ble, but easy and fast, the cutting of in-
terlocking sliding dovetail joints, some of
which go front to back on the piece, some
side to side, and some top to bottom.
Because every fe-
male recess cut into
matching pieces into
which a male compo-
nent will slide are cut
at the same time and
in the correct orienta-
tion, errors are much
harder to make.
The lengths of the
male pieces are al-
most always derived
right off of the pieces
into which the female
recesses have been
cut so these meas-
urement errors are
also much harder to
make.
I used to lay out the
pieces that were to
receive the female
recesses, such as the two interior sides
of a cabinet carcass, face up on a Multi-
Function Table with their front edges
tightly together and the top and bottom
edges properly aligned. Then I would
measure up to the center lines for the
sliding dovetail recesses that would es-
tablish things like dust dividers between
drawers, fixed shelves, drawer guides,
etc., on the back edges of both pieces.
50
MFS profiles edge mount at 90
degrees to one another to form
rectangles of varying sizes
Then I would manually position the guide
rail (offset by 20mm for routing work) and
clamp it down to make the router cuts.
Now I skip the measurement and manual
positioning steps and use the MFS pro-
files with the shop-built saddles and
shop-built stops instead. It is fast and
easy to set the stops on two profiles
time and accuracy gains really add up for
me.
Can you justify it "just" for this purpose?
Maybe not if you are a hobbyist on a
budget, but, if you do a lot with your guide
rails, you likely can and will.
I have an industrial sliding table saw
which I use for most of my in-studio saw
cuts, but I am finding myself doing more
and more on the my Festool Multi-
Function Tables with one or more of the
20mm back from
the desired center
line, hook the
stops over the end
of the work pieces,
place the saddles
onto the guide rail
and, bang, the
guide rail is right
where I want it and
in a fraction of the
time it used to take
to do all the meas-
uring and marking.
Can I justify the
MFS system "just"
for the application
of positioning
guide rails accu-
rately? Yup, be-
cause I do it sev-
eral times a day
everyday and the