|
I thought these were pretty good until I bought some Rockler feather boards. The Rockler boards have a more commercial grade feel about them by using thicker plastic in the bodies and knobs, yet having plenty of flex in the feathers. Also, Rockler makes the expandable wedge lock hold downs out of metal, which are more dependable in grabbing and releasing from the table saw miter slot, than the plastic ones Kreg uses.Kreg makes a terrific line of pocket hole cutters, but these feather boards are just.OK.
Best in class for plastic feather boards. A bit pricey, but when compared to other lower cost feather boards I own it proves worth the extra cost. A good feature is the extra bolts supplied for mounting to alternate surfaces, and the ability to vary height with spacers supplied.
One slight downside is that the plastic slider that fits into the miter slot on the rounter table gets sawdust and woodchips caught in it so that the featherboard does not easily release from the miter slot. I've used these featherboards for about 4 months and found them to very helpful on my router table. They have helped prevent injury from a couple of nasty kickbacks. This isn't a big deal, only a mild annoyance. I purchased another set a week ago so I could use them on the router table fence.
This is a great product and safety device. After using them for only a day, I can't vouch for their longterm quality yet, but I can say I found myself thinking back to how many times I've been lucky and not lost parts of my fingers because I was stupid and putting them close to the blad because I didn't have a product like this to hold the wood tight to the fence. I borrowed a the Bench Dog version from a friend, but found it didn't fit tightly into my Ridgid TS3650 table saw. This Kreg model fits great and locks down tight. My only regret so far is hesitating spend the $40 to buy a product that I thought wouldn't be the helpful. I should have bought them years ago and not relied on luck to keep my fingers attached.
Not that expensive, and if I had used them my entire woodworking career, I wouldn't have a messed up finger from a board kicking back at me. My router table uses right-to-left, and my table saw uses the equivalent of left-to-right, so I have two of them set up each way.
Thus, when they arrived, there were four featherboards. In error, I ordered two of these, not realizing that they came in a two-pack.
To change these things from a right-to-left feed into a left-to-right feed, you remove the bolts and washers and put them in from the other side. OK, you can never have too many of these things, so I kept them.
That turned out to be a good thing. Works great.
These are as well made as any I've seen.
|
