Home DIY

Both will give you extremely good accuracy, so in that sense you won't go wrong with either. If you are ever going to down the MFT road, you will wish you had festool track vs a mafell one, but thats fairly niche. The track joining system on the mafell tracks is way better than the Festool, with which you risk knocking them out of alignment when moving the track. If you are doing rips on full size sheets I would budget to get a single piece long track, at least 2.7m long if you go for the festool.

Lots of videos comparing the two on YT, have a look.

Learning some lessons today.

100m singles are about £25 a reel and handy for so many times you just need a bit of cable.

You'll be putting MIC in conduit next. 😉

Those Lack are actually in pretty much the size I want but, according to the IKEA website they have a load limit of 10kg. I suspect we may be looking at more than that with cookbooks in particular. I wonder if the limit is the fixings into the wall or the shelf sagging with only a support at either end.

Cheers @Bobbo if I do go down the DIY route then that looks to be the way to go. I was concerned about getting the holes exactly square without a drill press so that would solve that.

@matt101 they do look quite understated and will definitely be an easier option. Will have to have a think.

I have had a DTD152 for a few years now, really want to upgrade it, but this thing refuses to die, I have so far:

1. Run over it with a tractor
   
2. Dropped it into the bottom of a 3ft muddy puddle
   
3. Used it to remove lorry wheels, to the point it got so hot I physically couldn't hold it
   
4. Dropped it from the top of 2 story scaffolding
   
   

And the bloody thing keeps plodding along, impressively\annoyingly well made

What would you upgrade to?

Would like a DTD171, for the brushless motor and the different power modes, we have a lot of corrugated and box profile on the farm, so the special mode for that would be useful.

Yeah that's not necessary for me! Just want something that will be reliable and last a long time. Got a Makita SDS and it's great so was thinking of that or a Milwaukee

If you go Milwaukee then powertoolmate.co.uk tend to be the cheapest in the UK, and they have a facebook group where they often post deals.

You won't go wrong with the DTD152, I have happily driven hundreds of 200mm screws into oak with it.

Admittedly I'm crazy about it but Vitsoe 606 would look good there to my eyes.

In fairness, on a normal redecoration I often aim to finish on the walls because of that sort of thing. Leaving the woodwork a few days and then taping and one final touch on the walls can give a really nice finish. Sometimes it just can't be done though.

Nice website but seems they are struggling for stock at the moment

Yeah. Stock is a bit of a pain everywhere at the moment.

I have both and moderately prefer the Mafell. Only problem is I would be inclined to go with Festool because of the system rails. The TS55 did all duties until I eventually put it in the CMS system saw table and now it's there most of the time.

Yeah, I run two when doing assembly work in oak. Just switch everytime one gets too hot to handle.

One for each hand!

Good shout. Need a couple myself.

Edit: pulled the trigger on a single one - thanks for the heads up! £60 is deffo the cheapest I’ve seen them recently. I was eying a pair for £127 and that was the best price anywhere and they went out of stock before I got round to ordering. And now I can’t afford/justify buying 2, lol.

Aye, although in a funny way it was a good bit of practice for working our cable runs and what needs to go where etc.

Still, singles next time for sure...

You want to run an extractor with them regardless, as the blade is so enclosed it can get fairly clogged up (or so I was advised by my wise old joiner colleague).

I have the Mafell, don’t regret it at all. Much prefer its sturdiness (perceived or otherwise) compared to the festool.

The mafell will run on festool rails, and if it’s only the saw your considering I’d go mafell. But there is a whole system of festool stuff that ties in with the rails.

Mafell have some tools that work with their rail, but it’s not really anything like what festool offer.

I use the Mafell on Festool rails predominantly. The main thing to note is you can't share rails between saws because the blade has a slightly different offset so the rubber edge can be different from the cut line.

Mafell scoring feature is great in Melamine or veneer. The angle setting is better and the stability of the angle.

I do have a small set of Mafell rails and really like them but the Festool ones I have in a few lengths including the 2.7. Cutting even a few 8ft sheets you are really grateful for it. The Festool rails are a little easier to engage the saw with. Mafell is a very thin strip of aluminium, Festool has this big ridge to sit the saw on. Beyond that I don't think the rail system matters. Mafell do a suction cutting rail for Melamine which is brilliant but I doubt they sell many.

That’s deffo a valid criticism about the rails. The mafell/bosch rails are deffo more fiddly to get the saw to sit on, and although minor, it doesn’t go unnoticed.

You can also get the Bosch saw which basically the same as the Mafell one minus a few bells and whistles (no scoring function and no flip down shroud for blade changes) but otherwise it's same motor, rails and chassis etc. All of that for 100 notes less than the festool, which in turn is ~ 70 less than the maffell (last time I checked at least). I have the Bosch and I love it. Still got my eye on one of these for ultimate lazy cutting - no need to even push the saw!

I think this is something called a 'TV aerial'. Never used it, don't want it.

I can easily reach it on the outside, so figured I'd snip it as close as possible on the inside before tugging slightly back into the hole and making good. Don't want to remove it completely and have to deal with the consequent hole through the wall.

That sound reasonable?

1 Attachment

I removed mine that had been dangling there for 8 years or so (never used as we had Sky). We had it removed when the sash windows were refurbished.

6 months after that we decided to move to BT TV (which requires an aerial). Luckily this was around the time we were having the pointing redone on the back of the house so we had scaffolding up and myself and upstairs neighbour (well, mostly him) sorted out the aerial cables and I ran a new cable in through the hole the existing Sky cables come in.

It's a pretty common approach.

You have to decide on a method to fill it though. The first strike of anything other than a 2 part body filler type will shrink considerably. The problem is 2 part filler is a bitch to sand or carve into shape on the corner of a moulding like that. I use a ready mixed wood filler (you can guess who makes it), let it shrink and then fill it again. It's soft enough to sand or even shape with water on a cloth. Then normally it will disappear under paint.

Good to know I'm thinking on the right lines, cheers.

I'm not in any rush, is it not possible to allow for the shrinkage and then add subsequent layers as necessary? Took that approach with some smaller issues on the one I've finished already. Used a pretty standard looking Ronseal wood filler which was easy enough to sand smooth.

The frames have a fair bit of 'character' so I'm not too bothered about it being perfect.