Fein Multimaster and "wood slicing"

[Jim Barstow]

I saw a pair of Seth Rolland's bookends a couple years ago in a museum in NYC. (See http://www.sethrolland.com/)
After the Fine Working article on his work (See http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/27869/seth-rolland-slicing-maestro),
I started playing around with seeing if I could do the same thing.

I built a jig for my bandsaw that allows repeated cuts accurately spaced apart. I've had some success with construction but I'm
stuck on sanding. The article says he uses a Fein Multimaster for sanding. I'm willing to buy this pricey tool but only if I believe
it will be of more general use. (I don't have any remodeling jobs to justify it.) How useful is this tool in a wood shop?

[Mike Henderson]

The multimaster patents expired and there's a number of less expensive versions of the tool, all the way down to a Harbor Freight version, which was on sale for $17 recently. Take a look at some of the other makers before you buy the Fein. If you're going to use it all the time, the Fein is a good tool, but if you're only going to use it occasionally, any of the clones will work fine for you. I have the HF because I don't use it a lot and it works fine for my use.

I don't remember everyone who makes one, but off hand I can think of Bosch, Rockwell, Dremel, and Harbor Freight. I think there's some more companies and hope others will post their names.

Mike

[Chris Rosenberger]

I have the Multimaster. I love it for sawing & scraping on remodel jobs. I have found it very lacking as a sander.
If you are only wanting a sander, then check out the Festool DX93 or RO90. Both have extended sanding pad options that would work well for your project.
They also have very good dust collection.

[Jerome Hanby]

Second on that, if I were going to spend Multimaster money, I'd buy Festool sander(s). Pick up one of the variable speed Harbor Freight jobs for about $50 if you want that functionality in your arsenal. I haven't handled both units, but I can't see the Fein being hundreds of dollars better. But, that type of tool can be very handy to have around.


I have the Multimaster. I love it for sawing & scraping on remodel jobs. I have found it very lacking as a sander.
If you are only wanting a sander, then check out the Festool DX93 or RO90. Both have extended sanding pad options that would work well for your project.
They also have very good dust collection.

[Jeff Monson]

Fine homebuilding magazine just did a test on multimaster blades. Very interesting article, Bosch blades blew the competition out of the water. Fein blades were 2nd place.This test was done with the general purpose cutting blade.

[Scot Ferraro]

I have a Fein and love it -- very high quality and great power. Very useful in the shop too for all kinds of cutting tasks. I do use the profile sanding kit a lot, but there is no dust collection with it and that is a draw back. You can buy an attachment to mount the Fein to a work bench or drill press to make it more of a stationary type tool. Bosch also has an attachment that they were giving away awhile back to allow their blades to be used with a Fein. The blades for Fein are also on sale at a lot of places and you can save some money over the regular prices. I use the precision blades to flush cut dowel plugs and other cutting operations and it leaves a smooth cut. It is not a tool that is used every day, but with some though it is extremely useful.

Scot

[Don Morris]

I also have the Fein, bought years ago when there were no others. Have used it for many and varied jobs. I agree though, if I were going to buy such an animal now, I'd look at one of the clones, even though I love the Fein, it's overpriced itself considering what's available. I've seen several comparable units, but don't know about their sanding capability. I've used mine for sanding on occassion, it worked OK. I have other tools that work better than the Fein for sanding but they are specialty sanding tools, like those mentioned above. Every now and then a job comes up that when I think what tool to use on it, the multimaster often comes to mind, so that type of tool is very handy to have. I'd only buy it if I were in the home remodeling business.