Jim Becker
12-02-2017, 8:12 PM
My "stable" of Festool stuff includes an older MFT-1080. It hasn't been used it much, but when I have pulled it out over the years, it was the right tool for the job. Since I did my shop rearrangement to provide more space for assembly and finishing, I've had it out on the floor a bit more and like having the extra utility that it's perforated work surface brings as well as its general stability...so much so, that I was actually considering buying another MFT. The rub there is that the older version is 8.5cm shorter than the current version. So my plan was to come up with a way to raise it up to match the current 90cm/900mm height. In the meantime, I discovered Timothy Wilmots' pretty neat "MFSC (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWEdrBdbBhg)" multi-function shop cart which employs a lot of the great characteristics of the Festool MFT and adds a lot of other functionality, including height adjustability. I'm seriously considering building one for my shop instead of buying the MFT/3 as I see the value in the additional features. However, the same height difference is an issue as the MFSC is also keyed in on the 900mm work surface height when raised all the way up.
Saturday being Saturday in my post retirement from full time work world, I wasn't into doing anything "heavy" after the normal morning of food shopping with Professor Dr. SWMBO, but wanted to something in the shop since I spent a good part of Friday doing a deep cleaning after finally physically completing a large commission...vacuum and all. That project is still on my bench where it's going to have to live for another week before I can deliver and install it. So I started looking more closely at how to raise up that older MFT-1080 8.5cm without re-inventing the wheel.
I pried the rubber foot of one leg so I could measure both the ID and OD of the tubular legs, anticipating I might have to head to the lathe to make "leg extenders" the spinny way...including making a mess in my now-clean shop. LOL However, as I mentioned in my recent band saw outfeed project thread, I'm a bit of a packrat for wood scrap and other things and I suddenly realized I had a stout wooden pole/dowel that originally was in a cedar closet in the upstairs of my shop building. It looked about the right side in the rack, and wouldn't you know it, it was a perfect fit for the ID of the steel tubing that Festool used to make the legs on that MFT-1080. :D That cemented how I was going to do the deed.
I started out by cutting some pieces of the dowel that are a few inches longer than would be needed for each of the legs. (I found out one would need to be longer...more on that later) I then measured up 8.5cm so I could locate some pan-head screws to act as simple "stops", drilled a pilot hole in a position that would put the edge of the screw head right at the line.
372711
372713
This certainly worked, at least for testing purposes, but I realized that some form of non-slip foot was going to be needed at the bottom of these leg extensions and the original rubber/plastic caps from Festool were sized for the OD of the tubing, not the ID. In a container that's dedicated to such things, I found some appropriate "feet" that included a non-slip ring and fastened them to the end of the dowel pieces with a screw...and then did a new measurement took into account the thickness of the "feet".
372712
That works, so it was time to drill the pilot holes in the appropriate place for the screw heads to brace against the metal tubing. One screw also went through the tubing and into the dowel to insure it wouldn't inadvertently come out, should the wood shrink slightly for any reason.
372714
372715
The MFT-1080 has one foot that incorporated a height adjustment feature to help keep it from rocking on an uneven surface...and that leg was "shorter" once the mechanism was removed. I cut a longer length of dowel to use for that corner and carefully measured an adjacent leg to insure that it was of the same length. I held off with the screws until I could turn the table over onto its legs to be sure that the length was correct.
372716
372717
At that point, I inserted one screw to hold things cleanly before turning it back over and completing the remaining screws. Each leg has three screws for the metal tube to rest on plus one screw through the metal into the dowel as mentioned previously.
Finally, while it was on its back, I masked off the "feet" and used some left-over black spray paint to make the wood "disappear" visually.
372718
Saturday being Saturday in my post retirement from full time work world, I wasn't into doing anything "heavy" after the normal morning of food shopping with Professor Dr. SWMBO, but wanted to something in the shop since I spent a good part of Friday doing a deep cleaning after finally physically completing a large commission...vacuum and all. That project is still on my bench where it's going to have to live for another week before I can deliver and install it. So I started looking more closely at how to raise up that older MFT-1080 8.5cm without re-inventing the wheel.
I pried the rubber foot of one leg so I could measure both the ID and OD of the tubular legs, anticipating I might have to head to the lathe to make "leg extenders" the spinny way...including making a mess in my now-clean shop. LOL However, as I mentioned in my recent band saw outfeed project thread, I'm a bit of a packrat for wood scrap and other things and I suddenly realized I had a stout wooden pole/dowel that originally was in a cedar closet in the upstairs of my shop building. It looked about the right side in the rack, and wouldn't you know it, it was a perfect fit for the ID of the steel tubing that Festool used to make the legs on that MFT-1080. :D That cemented how I was going to do the deed.
I started out by cutting some pieces of the dowel that are a few inches longer than would be needed for each of the legs. (I found out one would need to be longer...more on that later) I then measured up 8.5cm so I could locate some pan-head screws to act as simple "stops", drilled a pilot hole in a position that would put the edge of the screw head right at the line.
372711
372713
This certainly worked, at least for testing purposes, but I realized that some form of non-slip foot was going to be needed at the bottom of these leg extensions and the original rubber/plastic caps from Festool were sized for the OD of the tubing, not the ID. In a container that's dedicated to such things, I found some appropriate "feet" that included a non-slip ring and fastened them to the end of the dowel pieces with a screw...and then did a new measurement took into account the thickness of the "feet".
372712
That works, so it was time to drill the pilot holes in the appropriate place for the screw heads to brace against the metal tubing. One screw also went through the tubing and into the dowel to insure it wouldn't inadvertently come out, should the wood shrink slightly for any reason.
372714
372715
The MFT-1080 has one foot that incorporated a height adjustment feature to help keep it from rocking on an uneven surface...and that leg was "shorter" once the mechanism was removed. I cut a longer length of dowel to use for that corner and carefully measured an adjacent leg to insure that it was of the same length. I held off with the screws until I could turn the table over onto its legs to be sure that the length was correct.
372716
372717
At that point, I inserted one screw to hold things cleanly before turning it back over and completing the remaining screws. Each leg has three screws for the metal tube to rest on plus one screw through the metal into the dowel as mentioned previously.
Finally, while it was on its back, I masked off the "feet" and used some left-over black spray paint to make the wood "disappear" visually.
372718