Opinons please. Oscillating multi-tools

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Not your average framer
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Opinons please. Oscillating multi-tools

Post by Not your average framer »

Is a oscillating multi tool a useful thing for a picture framer to purchase? My thinking is that the blades feature a fine tooth pattern and I am assuming that this should produce a very clean finely finished cut, which is hopefully shows much less saw marks,than a normal power saw. There are some fairly in-expensive multi tools available and I was wondering, if there would be any worthwhile advantage in buying one.
Any thoughts please.
Thanks,
Mark.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Opinons please. Oscillating multi-tools

Post by fusionframer »

In a word, no.

I use them all the time for when on a site for window and door fitting and other carpentry jobs. However, i don't use them in my workshop when making the doors etc. And although i have them, i have never had a reason to need one for framing.

Nick
www.fusionframing.co.uk

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Not your average framer
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Re: Opinons please. Oscillating multi-tools

Post by Not your average framer »

Thanks Nick,

I was just wondering if the real fine toothed saw bades might do a good job cutting some things with a nice smooth cut. I've never used one myself and was just thinking that they are really cheap, so is it worth me buying one. It's not that I have any special need to buy one for any particular reason.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Opinons please. Oscillating multi-tools

Post by prospero »

Hi Mark. :D

I've often thought of one of these but not for sawing necessarily. How exactly are you thinking of using it. I thought one
would be handy for getting into corners, but a chisel or a knife does the job. Often power tools can be a two-edged sword.
You have to keep them firmly under control. One slip and you can do big damage to a frame.

On a side note..... I recently had the bright idea of getting one of those cute little mini-grinders as a dedicated pilot-hole driller. I drill
a lot of pilot holes with a 1.5mm drill with my Einhell cordless. It does the job, but these mini grinders are very small and light. Not much
bigger than a pen.
I got one. It wasn't dear. BUT, while it came with about 160 'accessories' it didn't have the collet to take a 1.5mm drillbit. :lol:
I eventually got a collet that did (it uses Dremel compatible collets). The problem came when I actually tried to drill a hole. It just
hasn't got the guts to drill a 1.5 mm hole (despite coming with larger drillbits in the kit). The drill goes in about 6mm and it stalls.
Lesson learned. :?
I then bought a cordless Dremel (I've had a corded one for yonks). This has bags of power and it's well built. It's not much light than
my Einhell cordless though. It will no doubt come in handy though.....

All in all I've found that while power tools look attractive it it often easier to do a job by hand. Particularly applicable to sanders. :P
Watch Out. There's A Humphrey About
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Re: Opinons please. Oscillating multi-tools

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Peter,

I've had a few vague thoughts in mnd, but never having used one, I'm not really sure how well the will do some jobs.

You can get semi circular saw blades for these and I did wonder whether I might be able to construct a small table saw using one of these. I was thinking that because it is not a spinning blade that it probably would not throw saw dust all over the place. However I'm guessing that it might also be painfully slow to use. I'm not much into doing more work, than necessary to construct my own customer mouldings. I like producing stacked moulding frames as all the machining has already been done and any alterations which I choose to make do not need to involve much work at all. As far as possible, I try to make use of any existing factory machined surfaces.

I somethimes extend the overall depth of some moulding and the cut and plane the face in which any join and glue line is present to produce a clean seamless surface, which easily disappears completelely when hand finished. My table saw creates plenty of saw dust and I set this up for use in my back yard and the dust goes flying everywhere. As you can no doubt imagine, this is not very helpful on rainy days! I'm still looking for ways to make life a bit easier for me, hence my interest in the oscillating multi-tools. I'm not desparate to get one at all, but just was wondering, if it is something which I would find really useful to have.

I seriously thinking about buying a hand held belt sander to mount into a home made wooden constructed flat working table and a verticular belt sander, which I can easily use for sanding and shaping. I already know that this would be really useful to me and I already need to do this same task by other means. I also have a couple of older router in addition to my most recently obtained router and I have been thinking of moulding these into two custom made wooden bieces of machinery, where I can feed very ordinary plain low cost off the shelf through them to add some extra shape / embellishment to otherwise not very special mouldings.

The idea of the wooden pieces of machinery is than the mouldings would be fed into the machine through long wooden tunnel and that the would be a small cheap vacuum cleaner sucking the air and saw dust from both ends of the tunnel, so that an inward flow of air is passing from both ends towards the extraction area in the middle. My reasoning being that the saw dust will not escape from either end by travelling against the dirrection of the preveilling air flow. I'm not really sure how easy it may be to route a nice bit of shape onto bare wood obeche mouldings, but I have got a particular, very helpfully priced flat obeche moulding in mind to hopefully be using for this idea.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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Re: Opinons please. Oscillating multi-tools

Post by Justintime »

I tried one once for sanding. It was a disaster and deafeningly loud. The only useful thing I have seen them used for is to cut off the bottom of architrave when installing wood floors.
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Re: Opinons please. Oscillating multi-tools

Post by theframer »

I have a muti-tool and does not have a lot of use for the framing side of things,

But i had a large oil on board where someone had glued timber supports on the back that needed removing and they were really well glued down the multi tool was a god send saved me loads of time with the scrapper tool attached and removed them leaving a great smooth finish.
Also great for removing one side of a damaged frame that has been joined, i cut it a few mm from the join.
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