Craftsmanship in Wood

I have the Festool getup for straight line routing. The setup is frustrating to adjust accurately and does not track well.

I’m cutting out a series of blind dados soon and something better is desired

I’m considering replacing it with micro fence, which appears well made.

I’m wondering if it’s worth the change, have any of you used micro fence and are you happy with it?

I have the Micro Fence edge guide, and it's fairly nice. IIRC, Chris has some Micro Fence kit as well and can probably comment further. It's certainly robustly made, and holds tight with the usual proviso that you get used to the setup and build a good routine of Tightening All The Things. That said, I haven't done a huge amount of work with it; it's not part of my would-be-production workflow.

I suppose the only other straight-line guide I've used that I really like is the Trend Varijig straight-line setup. The extrusions are reasonably robust, and the clamping system is great. Easy to lock down completely. I've used these with router guide bushings, or with tooling w/ some kind of a reference edge (e.g. circular saw). As with most such systems, there's often a weak link at creating a rigid sliding connection between the extrusion and the tool(s). Maybe I could fabricate an interface between these extrusions and my Micro Jig guide?

MicroFence is decent, probably nothing better on the commercial market. but I would not characterize it, or any product from that company, as 'robust'.

Thank you both!

The hold up in making something better is a fine adjustment screw, the rest of it is easy. The screw needs to be fairly large and very fine threaded.

I may just make something, I am easy on the tools but I want something long for the crosscut.

Chris Hall wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 02, 2018 9:34 pm

MicroFence is decent, probably nothing better on the commercial market. but I would not characterize it, or any product from that company, as 'robust'.

Haha, thanks Chris for holding to standards! Maybe my comment aligns better with Chris’ if you add “relatively speaking” to it. I mean, when the comparison is to the dodgy thing that came with my trim router...

Micro Fence is one of those products that, if you had a lathe and a milling machine, you could readily make for yourself, and improve upon, IMO.

The edge guide accessories that come with virtually all routers on the market are a total joke, unless one's aim is simply to hack at wood, Festool's edge guide included (and I doubt Mafell's guide is any better). I don't understand why the products are so poor in this regard.

Chris and I had discussed this over the phone as well. I think I’m going to pass on the micro fence and put some machine tools to work.

Truly the hard part is the adjuster, it needs to be both very robust and finely adjustable.

I hope to find a commercially available adjuster thread, then build out the rest of the unit.

Distance travelled is equal to 1/TPI.

Therefore a bolt with 10 TPI travels 0.1" in one full turn.

Microfence's dial is graduated so that one full turn moves a distance of 0.05", which happens to equal 20TPI. That works pretty well. If you wanted super precision adjustment, you could employ a bolt with 100TPI, so one turn of the dial was only a 0.01" distance, but you would need that item and the nut with gradations custom made. On the other hand, 1/2" x 20 TPI is the UNF standard. If you go to UNEF (extra fine), the 20 TPI can be found in the following sizes: 3/4", 13/16", 7/8", 15/16", and 1". Probably, 1/2x20 is the most useful all around IMO.

Thanks Chris, that is very useful info! Much appreciated.

On a lark, I decided to look up 100TPI hardware, and came up with this page from Kozak Micro Adjusters. They also make the associated adjuster knobs, zero-backlash bushings, etc. Check the navigation on the left; probably a matched set would make the most sense. The prices seem extremely reasonable as well.

Also, that's literally the first hit I came across. Base Lab Tools also has some similar products, and looks like some application videos as well (e.g. "How to press fit a fine adjustment screw bushing", etc.).