Post by oncomeme on Apr 9, 2018 0:20:40 GMT -5
I make a lot of really thick butcher blocks and the Mafell rails have been an absolute godsend for me as they allow me to straightline "rip" the intermediate glue-ups down to the last few millimeters of material by making use of the clamping slot right next to the splinterguard. I could never do that with any other track saw and I have never regretted my decision to switch to Mafell for a single second.
There's a huge problem, though: 80mm + 20mm of worktop is too much for the Mafell clamps to reach through comfortably. You can kinda force it, but then moving anything is an exercise in brute force and frustration.
I saw the Bosch quick-clamping alternatives with their much longer reach and had them sent over from Europe immediately. They're neat except their heads can't fit through a 20mm dog hole, so they're also completely and utterly useless to me.
I thought I'd be smart and knock out the spring pin that held the steel bar in the chips, slide it out, slide it into the dog hole, and then slide it back into the handle assembly. This does not work at all, because, if you ever open one up, you'll see that the design of the guts of these things is an absolute joke. A very large, reasonably strong steel spring is VERY precariously balanced atop two miniscule plastic mounting bosses that are not capable of holding it in place at all, and once the bar is removed, you can forget about ever re-assembling the thing because that top spring will never sit still again. Given how seldom I was able to use them, and the cost/quality ratio, I don't think I'll bother replacing them anytime soon.
So now I'm looking for other manufacturers' clamps that might accept the bar from the Bosch clamps and asking myself "why in the hell is this even a problem?" For a company that dedicates itself to the timber framing industry so heavily, you'd think there'd be some level of awareness that somebody, somewhere might want to clamp a track to something thicker than a sheet of plywood.
I've read more than enough of these threads to have a strong feeling that I already know the answer, but has anyone, anywhere seen a better clamping solution short paying a machinist to mill them for me?
And yes, I have an Aerofix track and love it for all the things it does well, but the surfaces of these intermediate glue-ups are far from smooth and there is absolutely no hope of pulling a suction atop one, so no dice. Would have bought an 80mm Erika, but I have no way to power it.
There's a huge problem, though: 80mm + 20mm of worktop is too much for the Mafell clamps to reach through comfortably. You can kinda force it, but then moving anything is an exercise in brute force and frustration.
I saw the Bosch quick-clamping alternatives with their much longer reach and had them sent over from Europe immediately. They're neat except their heads can't fit through a 20mm dog hole, so they're also completely and utterly useless to me.
I thought I'd be smart and knock out the spring pin that held the steel bar in the chips, slide it out, slide it into the dog hole, and then slide it back into the handle assembly. This does not work at all, because, if you ever open one up, you'll see that the design of the guts of these things is an absolute joke. A very large, reasonably strong steel spring is VERY precariously balanced atop two miniscule plastic mounting bosses that are not capable of holding it in place at all, and once the bar is removed, you can forget about ever re-assembling the thing because that top spring will never sit still again. Given how seldom I was able to use them, and the cost/quality ratio, I don't think I'll bother replacing them anytime soon.
So now I'm looking for other manufacturers' clamps that might accept the bar from the Bosch clamps and asking myself "why in the hell is this even a problem?" For a company that dedicates itself to the timber framing industry so heavily, you'd think there'd be some level of awareness that somebody, somewhere might want to clamp a track to something thicker than a sheet of plywood.
I've read more than enough of these threads to have a strong feeling that I already know the answer, but has anyone, anywhere seen a better clamping solution short paying a machinist to mill them for me?
And yes, I have an Aerofix track and love it for all the things it does well, but the surfaces of these intermediate glue-ups are far from smooth and there is absolutely no hope of pulling a suction atop one, so no dice. Would have bought an 80mm Erika, but I have no way to power it.