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Filippo buddy I have the 5" ETS - 125 I think and I like it just fine.  It fits my hand well, is not heavy, and the smaller sanding surface lets me concentrate on smaller areas if I need to.  It is also their least expensive to purchase which never hurts either.

Don't be fooled though this sander can be as gentle as you would ever need or you can turn it up and bear down and it will remove material at an incredible rate.  Typically I just steer it and let its own weight apply the pressure.

Hesh, ya know, I have been torn between buying a nice down draft table or trying to set my self up with something like you have.

If you dont mind, where did you get yours, and what is it hooked up to?

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Lance buddy my Festool sander came from Woodcraft in Canton and they have a good supply of sanding disks too.

But...I have also bought Festool products from Festool USA (I think it is www.festoolusa.com) and the service was fantastic - I had my cordless drill in 2 days with standard shipping and the prices are fine.

I have the Festool CT-22 HEPA dust extractor which is really a first quality HEPA vac on steroids.  If I recall the thing sucks 135 CFM and I use it hooked up to my Performax 10-20 which I think most would consider a tough application for a vac.

I wanted to make or buy a down draft table but two things stopped me.  First, from all I have read about them you need a major air filter like a cyclone but you have one of those I think right?  And second I just don't do enough heavy sanding to justify one.  When I do heavy sanding I just stick the portable Shop-Vac air cleaner right next to me and slap a micro fiber rag (clean one of course) over the intake and everything gets sucked up into that. 

I have been using the Performax this evening to make enough braces for two SJs.  The Festool is running and there is NO dust on the surfaces of my shop.  I really recommend Festool products in as much as I have been thrilled with the 3 that I have so far.

A word of caution about the drill though.  I used to tighten the chuck on a bit with my old Crapsman 18V cordless drill by holding the chuck in one hand and pulling the trigger with the other hand.  When the chuck was tight my hand could stop the drill.  Recently I did this out of habit with the Festool 12V cordless drill and just smoked my hand very badly.......  The drill would not stop and I was to stupid to let go.......  Anyway the point here is that a Festool 12V drill has more torque then my old Crapsman 18V......  Pretty impressive but a heck of a way to find out......

Oh, and back on topic here.  Importantly if the down draft table is under consideration for use with a ROS if you get the Festool ROS and a Festool vac, even the little one, you will never need or use the down draft table.  When ever I use the pair every speck of dust is sucked into the vac.  I do have to turn the CT-22 vac down to nearly nothing or the ROS will lift the wood right off the table.....

Also, the Festool ROS can be used without a vac and they have a patented way for the ROS to suck the dust right into a small, disposable bag that comes with the ROS.  I used the ROS recently away from my shop without the vac and sure enough, no dust was left on the surfaces either and it all went into the disposable bag.

I have exactly what Hesh does, the CT-22, and the ETS-125, and I concur with what he says.

After sanding, regardless of grit, you will have NO dust on the surface of the instrument. It's strange to say that, I know, but it's true. And, if you don't turn the vac down somewhat, it's makes it very hard to hold the work on the table...exactly has Hesh says.

The only thing I've done diffenrently is this: I bought the extra hose/boom kit and attached it to my primary workbench so that the hose (and electrical connector) is over the top of the bench. That gets the hose out of the way, but gives me a 2-second reach to the Festool/brush combo for when I'm doing handsanding and want to quickly clean up a bit.

Bill

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Sorry Filippo for a bit of a diversion here from your original question but the following will hopefully speak to the quality and value of Festool products.

As mentioned I have been making braces for an SJ.  For me it starts with making all the brace stock, uniform, to the right dimensions, and ready to radius, glue, and then carve.  This is one of the very few operations that I ever remember to make enough for 2 guitars.  I tend to build two of the same sized guitars in a row, the first with nice zoot and then second, once I have my chops down, with nicer zoot.

I just finished making my brace stock using my Festool vac with a thickness sander - again a tough application for a standard shop vac.

Here are some pics of my set-up:

I call this my Play-dough fun factory - in goes the rough brace stock right off the band saw and with a few passes and some accurate measurements I have nice, clean, uniform brace stock.



Some of you may notice that I have used some masking tape on the gaps on the Performax.  I thought that this was a easy and fast way to make the vac more effective and it does indeed do so.



Above we see the Festool vac hooked up to the Performax with a 2" hose.  You can purchase these hoses either in anti-static or regular flavors.  The anti-static is supposed to resist having dust cling to it.  What I have is the regular hose, much less expensive, and it works fine.

Below is the Festool CT-22 HEPA.  Only the bottom is the actual vac - the white boxes are Festool "systainer" boxes a stackable series of containers that come with Festool products and fasten firmly onto the vac for convenient storage.  Between the systainers and that vac is an optional Festool hose organizer. 



And here are my results - 2 complete sets of braces for an OLF SJ.



Thanks for looking

Filippo hopefully you won't think I am hijacking this thread. Hesh/Todd, do you need to use Festool's sanding discs with their sanders or can you use the standard hardware store variety hook and loop paper sized for 5" or 6" diameter sanders?

Anthony you didn't ask me, but I can tell you. You do not need to use the "Festool" paper, but you will need paper with an additional hole in the middle, and that fits the 8 hole pattern. The Festool sanders blow air out of the center hole, and pull it back in from the outer holes.

Personally, I use the Klingspor brand, which is made to fit the Festool sanders, but I'm going to give the very high grit Festool papers a shot on the finish of my next guitars. The Klingspor works fantastic, lasts forever and fits the hole pattern of the Festool. Also, just to note, the Festool paper isn't really much more expensive than other kinds.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Filippo I visited Woodcraft when they had a Festool Saturday and they demonstrated the ROS models.  These are heavy lifters and able to remove stock at an incredible rate and finish up with a beautifully smooth surface.  But they are IMHO over kill for guitar building, much bigger, heavier, and more expensive.

In the demo though they took a rough sawn oak plank and turned it into a finished surface in only a few minutes - pretty impressive.  The demonstrator also put all his weight on the thing and could not stop it.....

AZ great question and one I had when making my purchasing decision too.  The answer is that you can use other disks but the hole pattern mis match defeats the excellent dust collection of the Festool ROS.  One could, I suppose, cut some holes to match but when you see the pictures below you will understand why this is not a good way to go.

Surprisingly Festool paper is economical, excellent quality, lasts a long time and in some cases cheaper than the cheap stuff.

Being a furniture/cabinet maker I have the older rotex 6". I am use to the weight so its seems fine to me, slow it down and let the weight of the sander do the work and I get very nice results. That being said I use it mostly for relatively flat areas, tops and backs. Being able to lock the spin action, the variable speed, and optional buffing pad make it a good alternative to a dedicated buffer. I also have a 5" dewalt, have worn out bosch and PC 5 and 6" ROS's, none of them compare to the festool in quality and performance. next 5" will be a festool.

Thanks Hesh!

I came home with a Festool MIDI today. It was $330 (a bit less than the
CT22) and has the capacity I'll need. Last saturday I picked up a
Performax 10-22 at a woodworkers swap meet for $350 with stand and
needed to find a quiet and compact way to collect the dust.

Yesterday I bought a Shop-Vac super quiet series vac and realized it
didn't have the power I'd need. Volume is a concern because of elderly
neighbors. The Festool is even more quiet than the Shop-Vac and seems
to suck twice as powerfully. I'm very excited to have it.

I can't wait to try it with my ETS 125. Do you set yours all the way to the
turtle when sanding?

AZ - you are very welcome my friend!

James - congrats!!  WOW lots of TAS happening out your way.

Using you MIDI with the 10-20 I think will work provided that you take very small passes at a time, no more that 1/8th of a turn on the 10-20 crank.  Also, the back plate of the hood has lots of fairly open cracks that will benefit from some simple masking tape to help redirect all the suction of your MIDI to the drum.

The MIDI if I recall is something like 94 CFM where the CT-22 is 134ish.  All of these specs are rather subjective and dependent on the condition of the filters and the newness of the bag.  With a little thinking like for example doing your thickness sanding as one of the first things that you do when you change bags you will be at the maximum performance of the MIDI when you do the tough tasks like drum sanding.  I change my bag for every guitar and they tend to be very full with just one guitar.  The trick is to keep the drum and paper cool to avoid gumming it up on oily woods like BRW or very hard woods like ebony.

Other things that I do to increase my performance it to cut my plates to the size of the guitar, plus over hang of course, prior to drum sanding so the drum sander has less work to do, less heat, less dust to clog the system.

The out take port on the back of the hood on the 10-20, probably Filippo's too, has a cross member screen type thing probably to prevent large chunks from being sucked into the dust extraction system.  With spruce, the fine, clingy dust seem to partially restrict this part of the port.  Be sure to stick the vac wand into the back of the port and clean this area very well after a session.

Also, inside the drum are fins.  These fins really will hold a great deal of dust and even create a noticeable imbalance in the machine that you can hear and feel when running.  this can't be good for the bearings and probably creates some heat too.

So...... be sure to completely clean the machine inside and out including sticking the vac wand near the side of the drum where the fins are (both sides of the drum) and you will see tons of dust being sucked out into the vac.  The top of the inside of the hood cakes up too with dust and I believe the lack of a smooth surface here also inhibits the performance of the vac with a drum sander.  I stick the wand up there and use my other hand with a 1" paint brush to sweep the inside of the hood clean and suck it all up at the same time.

Remember you are asking a guy who opens both door on his band saw and vacs the inside after every use......

When I am done cleaning my machine I plug the vac back into the machine and turn it on for a minute to get the rest of the lose dust and then push it into the closet.

Pay particular attention to installing the paper on the drum sanders.  It is not that easy to get right but very important that you do get it right.  The directions with the Performax are good and if you follow them you will have no problems.

Also, my condo has very early tripping of the circuit breakers.  So when I run my 10-20 and the Festool vac if say the dehumidifier clicks on at the same time I trip the circuit for the room.  You can either experiment with what you can have on all at once in your shop or consider running as short as possible a high quality/rated extension cord from the 10-20 down the hall and plugging it into another circuit.  That is what I do.

As for the turtle I set my vac in the middle or less when using the ES 125 and Bobs your uncle.

As for the power feed I set it on the 10-20 to 30 for nearly every thing and I only use 80 grit for hard woods and 120 for softwoods and get great results.

Remember too to pull the key from the machine when cleaning it (or unplug it) and do a dry run when starting to use it.  My dry run consists of putting the wood under the drum with the drum cranked up.  I then spin the drum by hand and gradually lower the drum until contact is jut barely made.  Then I replace the key, use the power feed to pass the wood through, turn on the drum and start thicknessing. 

If by chance you have set the drum to low the 10-20 will trip it circuit breaker and you can reset the drum higher, reset the breaker, and start again.

Typically I try to take no more that .005 off at once and my paper lasts longer this way.  I have also found that with some hard woods you can pass it through and say get a .005 reduction and then pass it through again and get an additional .003 reduction without ever lowering the drum.  So be careful to not remove to much at once.  You can always take more off, putting it back on is a trick that I would like to see done

Filippo buddy - Probably not - with your larger drum sander you will be taking nearly twice the wood off at one time and although what I do works for me it is marginal.  What you have is probably better too in terms of keeping the drum cooler and your paper should last longer because of the higher CFM rate.

The Festool IMHO would more than cover everything else in your shop but again my concern is your bigger drum sander.

I do wonder though that even though you have far greater CFM at the dust collector lots of plumbing systems that I read about on forums tend to lose some suction at the actual devices for a variety of reasons.  Leaky gates, partial clogs that you can't find or reach, etc.

I just keep my 15-16' Festool hose coiled on a go-bar and plug it in where I need it and have adapters on all my tools.

So in your case Filippo I think that a Festool would make an excellent Vac for you and perhaps limit the JDS plumbing that you have to do by just running the JDS to the drum sander.

I hope this helps guys and congrats on the great new tools/shops!!!

Thanks Hesh---though you just made all my archive research
meaningless I picked the masking tape trick up from you earlier in
this thread I believe. I was able to use the vac with my sander earlier in
the evening and the sander became an even better tool. I shifted my
budget around for the next few months last night after realizing I'd rather
pay for the Festool than spend $100 on something that wasn't sufficient
(I'd purchased a HEPA filter, too). I'm very happy.

I DO have serious TAS right now. It makes me sick to my stomach at
times, but after reading about lutherie for going on 10 years, I don't think
I'll lose interest anytime soon. I'll have a thread on my choices and
reasons for them soon. The condo situation makes thinking through
things very important as you know well.   

Ok, back to fitting the Luthier Tool binding jig to my PC 310.