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Chuck, one of my guiding principles in choosing shop equipt is: no doo-dads.
Fortunately for me, when I broke the rule and bought the Festool OF1400 and the Guide Stop, the two parts to that accessory were packed right inside of the case (the Systainer).

When we get machinery that uses the 'Swiss Army Knife' approach, advertising a zillion functions --- meaning a zillion parts to get lost --- we set ourselves for a confusing mess in the shop. I bought a device called a WoodRat that handles most of my routing chores. Without templates or jigs it does M&T, dovetails, box joints, and a few others.

I go nuts when I have to dig through drawers to find little pieces and bolts and such. :)

Gary Curtis
 
Chuck,

I just did my first project with mine. It involved cutting up four sheets of plywood. I'm still in awe of how safe, easy, and accurate it all was, *and* it saved me a tremendous amount of time. That's a good thing, because the work was both pragmatic and completely ephemeral: I was making video camera platforms for graduation ceremonies. Every shot here:

http://digitalmedia.cua.edu/calendar/event_dsp.cfm?event=4084

was done off one of those platforms. So they were critical on Saturday, but now they're just big, hard to store, black boxes... ;) Anyway, the Festool worked as if it had been charmed by one of those wands at Dragon's Paradox! ;) The wierd thing: I actually had less 'edge chipping' than I get on the tablesaw... mainly because of one of those removable doodads that I'm sure I'll lose at some point... ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
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