Thread: Kapex Rox

I received a phone call on Thursday from my favourite tool supplier. Since the only item outstanding on order from them was a Kapex, and it's not due in for another week, I immediately thought the worst.

"It's been delayed" I thought with a horrible sinking feeling
"They're getting less than they anticipated and I've missed out" ...
"The warehouse burned down"...
"The cargo ship sank"...
"WHAT IS IT ?!?!" I practically pleaded into the handset "Give me the bad news"
...

"Mr Turner?"

"Speaking" I replied cooly, realising the previous conversation had occurred only in my fevered imagination...

"Your Kapex is in, you can pick it up today...... Mr Turner?....Are you alright?...What was that thump?"

After I picked myself up off the floor, I thanked the kind fellow and said I'd be there directly to pick it up. I think I arrived before he'd finished hanging up the phone.

To cut a long story short, I am assured by the store owner and the Festool rep who was there that I have the first Kapex in Victoria, possibly the whole country (although Sydney has had some for 2 weeks. He wasn't sure if they'd given any out yet). Unfortunately I had to leave for work 30 mins after I got it home, so I was a little edgy that night shift.

The next day however I had a decent play with it and I have to say I'm pretty impressed.

Straight out of the box, it cut perfectly. To the limit of my measuring equipment, all cuts were EXACTLY at the settings I chose.

All mitre detents were bang on the money. The bevel adjustments are extremely accurate with absolutely 0 slack in the rack and pinion gearing, and easy to adjust to around 1/10th of a degree (just a guesstimate, but its close). Perfectly balanced with no tendency to fall over when adjusting.

The laser guide is the first I've seen that didn't look like it was drawn with a crayon. It did need some slight adjusting for blade alignment but once done it made lining up cuts a breeze. It's no thicker than a 6H pencil mark.

The crosscut slide action was silky smooth. No resistance whatsoever. Like wet ice sliding on wet ice.

The power and cut quality were outstanding. It cut through a piece of 75mm square 20 year old hard-as-a-rock redgum like a hot knife through butter and left a surface that was so smooth you could have left it unfinished and no-one would be the wiser. No saw marks whatsoever. The edges of the cut were razor sharp on 3 sides with some barely noticeable tearout on the rear (unsupported) face. The cut was as perfectly square as my combination square could measure. Absolutely no daylight could be seen betwixt blade and wood. Something I've never been able to achieve before.

I have minor quibble with the trenching feature though. The range of cut depths is a little limited. On 30 mm stock, the thickest tenon I could make was 10 mm. The adjustment simply wouldn't go any higher to make thicker tenons. I didn't actually measure the height of the blade at its highest point, but I'd guess around 25 mm. In addition the supplied blade also has alternate bevel teeth so the groove bottom is not flat but shaped like an inverted V.

I don't have a shop vac yet so it's hard to evaluate the dust collection, but there seemed to be a hell of a lot of dust coming out of the vacuum attachment even without a vac .

There's probably a heap of stuff I've forgotten to tell you about, but that's the majority of it. All in all, a very impressive bit of kit.

If anyone has anything they'd like to know about it before committing to paying that much for one, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer before next Wednesday when when it's officially launched. And you'd better decide before then, because Oz is only getting around 1000 machines total and most of them are already spoken for. According to the Festool rep we're not getting any more 'til June 08.

Cheers,
Brain