Reviewed: Festool FS-WA Guide Rail Angle Stop
Review: Damion Fauser
The potential and functionality of this new product in the Festool stable of accessories is apparent as soon as you take it out of the box. Designed to be attached to the FS guide rail system to allow for accurate and secure cutting of angles, I’ve used this tool for several tasks in the shop now and have found it to be very intuitive to set up and use. I’ve verified the accuracy of the tool with digital angle calipers, as well as with some basic trigonometric calculations, and I can report that this tool is extremely accurate right out of the box.
Fixing the stop to an FS guide rail is easy and secure with a lug that registers in the recess on the underside of the rail and a strong overhead cam buckle to lock everything firmly down. Further security for safe and accurate cuts is available when combined with the FS Rapid guide rail clamps, which can be used in the traditional fashion by sliding into the recess underneath the rail to clamp the rail directly to the workpiece. The angle stop also has a clever left/right bracket built in to the end of the trammel arm with recesses to accept the FS rapid clamps for fixing the stop itself to the workpiece. These two clamping options can be used either independently of each other or concurrently, offering great flexibility depending on the circumstances of the cut.
The Festool engineers have also added a further workpiece registration feature, with two corrugated stops that can be secured in the recess underneath the rails and fixed at any position to provide positive registration against the edge of the workpiece. When not in use, these stops have their own built-in storage cavity in the body of the tool, which is a great feature.
Setting the angle is very easy, with a large comfortable locking knob that fixes down fast and strong. The available cutting angles range from plus to minus 60°, with mechanical detentes at zero as well as plus/ minus 15, 22.5, 30, 45 and 60°.
The fidelity on the scale is in 1° increments, but it is easy to lock down and use the stop at finer increments if required.
This tool is available from Festool retailers and will find itself useful both on the jobsite and also for those needing to make angled cuts beyond the capacity of their tablesaw.
Review tool supplied by Festool Australia
Damion Fauser is a Brisbane based furniture designer maker who also teaches woodwork classes. See damionfauser.com