Which Multipurpose tool: Dremel?

[willcall]

Hi all, I am gathering my bits and pieces and need some tools for cutting out electric bodies and necks as well as pickup routing.
As some would be aware I currently have a drill press, circular saw, drop saw hand saws, chisels, electric drill and have now got myself a Wagner Safe-T-Planner.
I have seen (online) that a Dremel Trio Cancut out shapes like a jig saw using the supplied cutting bits. It can also route when using a template.
Or should I go for the other style which can be attached to a plunge router jig (dremel) and can also have a circular saw blade attached. This could be handy for use like a bandsaw for rough cutting the neck, I think.

http://www.mytoolstore.com.au/products/ ... t-335.html

The Dremels aren't too expensive when compared to Laminate routers so it makes me think they are not suited to the task.
Any suggestions, advice or 1st hand experience would be great to hear.

Cheers, Will

[kiwigeo]

The only job I use the Dremel for in my shop is routing saddle slots in bridges. A Trend T5 router or a Porter Cable lam trimmer are my work horse machines.

For routing out pickup cavities in a solid body electric a Dremel would sh*t itself at the sight of the job ahead of it......grossly underpowered for such a task.

If I was starting out I'd buy myself a decent router first, lam trimmer second and then if I had a bit of spare cash around still I might consider a Dremel.

[willcall]

Thanks.

[rocket]

I'm with Martin Will, you need something with some grunt to cut out pup cavities, Dremel is good for inlay work and other fiddly shit but that's about it. A 1/2'' router with a couple of horses behind it will eat most cut out jobs, Makita is my preference when it comes to routers, middle of the price range an usually very reliable, maybe Santa has some in his sack!!
Merry Christmas.
Rod.

[Nick]

Probably not what you want to hear Will but I'm with Martin & Rod. Save up (plus suggest money for birthday's & Chrissy from your nearest & dearest) and buy a decent plunge router, it may seem like a big investment (especially when the folding is a tight resource!) but in ten years time & you are still knocking out cavities with the same router you'll be glad of the struggle to get the right router!
Dremels even struggle to rout binding ledges, they don't have a lot of torque so load them up & they'll either stall on you or just plain burn out. I have one but it only see's the light of day at inlaying time, even this will be replaced once I've found some time to make a base for my Foredom
Laminate trimmers are good as a future investment for bindings but a plunge router would be the tool to look at first IMO. One that held a 1/2" bit would be the go but I have done it with a 1/4" sized router, just means you have to make lighter cuts.
And if you get one, make sure to practice on scrap first until you get the hang of it! They can do an aweful lot of damage in a very short time if you aren't familiar with them!

[simso]

The absolute smallest size unit I would use for a pickup cavity is a 1/4" trimming router, under that is just no good, the dremel is a great little tool for inlaying / saddle slotting and so forth, but nothing more demanding than that.

I purchased the dremel multi tool that supposedly sands routes and jigsaws, I was very dis-appointed, we used it a couple of times and now it sits in its box, the original dremel is far superior

There is unfortunatley no magic tool that does it all, you need power for the big jobs and hence big cumbersome machines, you need accuracy for the smaller jobs and hence the lighter machines, in between sizes can work like the 1/4 inch units but they are a compromise on the big jobs and the smaller jobs

[Allen]

Sign up to the Trade Tools website newsletter and get their Friday Specials. At least 4 times in the past year they have had their laminate trimmer that is a dead ringer for the Maktec one on sale for as little as $59. It's a handy little unit, Regular price is usually around the <$100 so still not a deal breaker.

[Kim]

If your doing solid bodies don't waste your money on a lam trimmer, it will do the work but you'll be underpowered and more likely to make mistakes and short life the tool.

Go down to cashies and grab urself a used Makita 3600br 1/2" router there is heaps of them around and for good reason. Don't pay more than around $100 and even then, it would want to look pretty tidy. If it does not run sweet as a nut, offer $50 max and then spend 15min of your life putting new bearings in and brushes in it and it will be as good as new no matter how old it is...just make sure nothing has been snapped off the cast etc. Do pay more if it has the fence and other fruit but it must at least have the spanners.

The 3600br are as tough and reliable as all get out and just about every tradie in AU has one rolling about in the back of his ute. The reason is that they spin true every time and have plenty enough grunt for any kind of hand held work. They are more noisy than say a Festools but are around 1/4 the price new and just as robust if not polished as the great German tool. To give an idea of why I recommend them them, mine has been used in stair making shop daily being pushed through cuts that most, for good reason, consider far too heavy as I routed stringer after stringer at full depth for tread rebates in jarrah, tassie oak and all sorts of HARDwoods.

The router never missed a beat....but we found a good percentage of 1/2 straight cut carbide bits on the market..some exie brads too, that could not take the work load and would shatter under the pressure, but the Mak 36 was never found wanting...a blade rep eventually found a line of Tesco bits that were up to the task and these, along with the stock standard Makita bits that came with the routers best at staying the distance for a resharpen...Anyhow after the factory environment, in the years I had that router as a site tool, its been dropped from roofs after cutting bullnose in barge boards, laid on the ground next to saw horses as a matter of course, (need to turn away for the start of each cut to prevent ur eyes from being sandblasted) had tones of crap stacked all over it in the back of utes and then bouncing along corrugated roads and dirt tracks, been rained on because other things mattered more in the stay dry stakes during down pours in the middle of nowhere and even used as a rip jarrah salvage boards into clean 4 x 2's...then it got lent to a mate for 9 months while he used it inverted to profile aluminium and then back to me for some reno work and to again be tipped upside down to run all kinds of crap through it in a table...same bearings, and, all though I have not used it in a good while for anything more than cutting the radius in the odd fretborad using my jig...it still spins as true as ever which explains why there are so many around...indestructible and a worthy nomination into the Aussie chippies power tool hall of fame...

Cheers

Kim

[John Maddison]

... a worthy nomination into the Aussie chippies power tool hall of fame...

Worthy of a whole new thread, Kim ... what else would you include?

[rocket]

Not lending any of my gear to you Kim!
Rod.

[willcall]

Thanks guys.

Overwhelming support for a dedicated 1/2" plunge router.
I found a "used once" Makita 1200w router for $85 in the local. Should be able to get it down a little though.

I now also think a router table with fences would be a wise investment.

Cheer, Will

[Kim]

... a worthy nomination into the Aussie chippies power tool hall of fame...

Worthy of a whole new thread, Kim ... what else would you include?

I reckon just about 'any' of the early blue Makita range is worth of entry John..drills, tec guns, circular saws (especially the 7 1/4" ). I can't say I have been let down with any of them. There are some small annoyances attached to a few tools like one of their hammer drills, not sure what model its in the shed and I can't be bothered looking, but it will jump out of gear to sit in nutral between high and low all by itself, self select 'hammer' function while sitting in the tool box when nobody is there. It will be working fine and then, for no apparent reason' it will unwind its own speed lock so the trigger will then have so little travel you can't pull it in at all to make the drill work until you wind it all the way back in again.....I think it is haunted.....but, you just can't kill the bastard. That drill has turned an 1 1/2" spade bit into jarrah 1" deep hundreds of times one after the other until the casing was 'hot' to touch and you could smell the electrics smoking...this was done to flush fit bolt heads and washers when prefabing components for an industrial construction project...hot and stinky but it did not die..Latter that same drill was abused to mix plaster for cornice work and jointing compound for gyprock using a giant over sized paint stirrer. Doing that would load the drill up with so much torque you just knew it could not last...but it did and its still going...still jumps out of gear, selects its own hammer function when it get the urge, but its still going strong.

The only early blue mak tool I've cooked has been a 125mm angle grinder. We were dismantling a huge shed out in the sticks for relocation. Town was too far and the guy with the 9" grinder to be used to cut the steel uprights from their footing had packed plenty of disk, but forgot the grinder. We had been out there for too long and starting to get sick of each others company....it was just time to go home and the job, sheeting, roof trusses etc were all stacked with everything ready to go but the uprights. The guard came off the 5" grinder so the 9" disk could fit and the uprights were cut down.....you could smell that little sucker smoking up too..but it did not die until a few weeks later when the little guy was again being used to save the day with a 125mm steel cutting disk being used to burn its way through treated pine boards in a tight spot very near ground level on a concrete floor where we simply could not get anything else in to make the cut without dismantling most of the building..... so she died midway through the last board of a long few smoky hours and we were forced to finish the last part of the cut with a hand saw from which the handle had been removed by sliding it back and forth full length whilst holding it in place with ur finger tips and lot of sweat and swearing.

Seriously good tools.. If you were only to use them as designed, I doubt you could ever out live one and I bet just about every past construction site would have its own tales of tool abuse to tell because sometime ya just gotta do what ya gotta do to get out of the way for the next bloke to make his money and on to the next so you can make yours and the Makita Power Tool Co seem to understand that.

Cheers

Kim