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I don't mind the scale being in metric but I have a small gripe about its location on the guide body. As you can see in the picture below there is a small gap between the scale and the stop this introduces a little guess work in setting the stop.
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The gap between the scale and the stop is about a 1/16".
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Since the scale is held on with self adhesive tape I assume the offset is to help prevent the scale from being peeled off if it was right on the edge of the guide. The stop can be set to within a half a millimeter without much trouble, for greater accuracy more care needs to be taken in setting the stop.
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The FS-PA-VL attaches to the end of the FS-PA (the end that goes under the rail) with a thumb screw. This allows you to makes the smaller cuts that the FS-PA can't do by its self.
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Here I'm attaching the FS-PA-VL with its thumb screw.
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The FS-PA-VL is made up of a short piece of the same aluminum extrusion. It uses a U shaped mounting bracket to attach to the FS-PA. The FS-PA-VL is on the right side of the guide rail and the piece that's the keeper is on the off cut (right) side of the saw. The VL also has a metric scale and shares the stops with the FS-PA.
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The U shaped mounting bracket allows the saw blade to pass safely through the opening in the bracket. Maximum depth of cut is 70 mm, which allows the TS 75 to cut to its max depth.
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Here's another angle of my using the FS-PA-VL.
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Before you can use the guide the scales need to be calibrated to your saw. The process is straight forward and only takes a minute or two per guide. (The guides will also need to be calibrated when you want to use a different blade in your saw.) First I'll cover the process for calibrating the FS-PA. Lock your saw in the "Fast Fix" blade changing position (the saw should also be unplugged), then placed it on the rail near the guide. Set the stop to where it's easy to measure from it, under the rail, to one of saw blade's teeth (I used 250 mm). If the scale and the ruler aren't the same measurement the guide needs to be adjusted.
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The arrow points to the screw that you need to loosen to calibrate the guide to your saw.
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To make the adjustment loosen the slotted screw and green circular know on the T-bracket then the locking lever under the guide. Now align the guide to the correct measurement, tighten everything up and recheck the measurement. When you're satisfied repeat the process on the other guide.
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The process is pretty much the same for the FS-PA-VL except you loosen two machine screws and measure to the off cut side of the blade. (The FS-PA-VL must be mounted to the FS-PA and be sure the saw is unplugged.)
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This picture shows the two screws to adjust the FS-PA-VL, the allen wrench from the saw fits these screws.
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The parallel guides in use.
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With the calibration out of the way let's make a few cuts. The first job I had for the parallel guides was to cut OSB as a backing for wainscoting. The OSB needed to be ripped to 36". Since the FS-PA can't make that large of a rip I set the guides to cut a little less than a foot off a full sheet to account for the thickness of the saw blade's kerf, this left me the 36" I needed. I checked the guide's setup against my 36" measurement on the first sheet and I was good to go. With a couple saw horse brackets and a few 2X4s I stacked three sheets at a time to gang cut the 7/16" OSB. In less than fifteen minutes my twelve sheets were cut and stacked ready to be installed. Most of that time was spent managing the sheets, aligning the guides and making the cuts was the easy part. It really is a simple as butting the stops to the edge of my sheets to place the rail. I checked several of the sheets and the cuts varied less than 1/16". Cutting full sheet goods to the same dimension is where the parallel guides really shine.
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On this job there is a shop in the basement with a cabinet table saw, however, I chose to use the Festool guides/plunge cut saw over the table saw for a couple of reasons. The first reason was it would have meant moving the sheets farther and more times using the table saw. Being able to bring the sheets to where I'm going to use them and cutting with TS 55/guides means I have to move them fewer times. The second reason was the table saw only has a small out feed table and no in feed table. I would have had a hard time running these sheets through the table saw by myself. With the Festool setup I was able to do the job easily and safely without any help.
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Here I'm making a rips on a sheet of OSB for a backing to wainscoting.
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Anyone that has ever tried to make accurate narrow pieces repeatedly with your Festool guide rail and saw knows this is somewhat of a weakness in the system. While there are ways around this problem I believe the FS-PA-VL guides are the best solution so far. So when I needed some small rips to use as shims I thought I'd test the accuracy and repeatability of the VL guides. The pieces I needed were only 4.5 mm (around 3/32") wide. The table saw can make narrow rips accurately but at a certain point the pieces are too small to cut safely. The FS-PA-VL makes the job of cutting rips this small safe. I needed the shims to be pretty much right on so this was going to be a test of the guide's accuracy. With careful setup my first attempt was off by 0.13 mm on one end and 0.22 mm on the other. Not bad for the first try, but can I do better?
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After a couple of minutes and some very fine adjustments to the stops I tried again. This time the results were as close to right on as I could expect. The best cut varied by 0.03 mm from one end to the other.
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Now that I've got the guides dialed in it's time to check the repeatability. I made three more cuts and measured the pieces. I was unable to match my best results but the accuracy was still very good with an average of +/- 0.09 mm.
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I can't say it was a fast process to setup these cuts but the results were good and at no time was this operation unsafe. I do feel I should point out these cuts were safely done because the stock I cut them from was a large piece of MDF. There is a limit to size of stock that you can safely make small rips from. Smaller stock should be clamped down to prevent it from moving during the cut. Too small of a piece can't be clamped and still have use of the parallel guides.
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The next step for the wainscoting is for pre-finished 1/4" oak plywood to be cut. To get the best yield from material I want to crosscut the 8' sheets to 31 15/16", this would give my three pieces per sheet. The problem is the parallel guides don't extend that far so a small modification was in order. I drilled a 1/4" hole in the end of the FS-PA's body to mount the FS-PA-VL (to the opposite end that is normally mounts to.) This gives me 11" more reach with a total cutting capacity of almost 37".
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