EQUIPMENT ADVICE by Festool

GIVING YOURSELF AN EDGE!

As you all know, working with pre-finished board materials such as Ply and M.D.F is a simple and cost effective way to produce cabinets, doors and anything with a shaped profile. Simple, until the edge needs to be applied! that is! Options vary from solid timber lipping and iron on edging but both have big drawbacks. Solid timber has to be clamped and then levelled to the surface and any slight inaccuracy when levelling will result in the pre-finished surface being marked and iron on edging is not the most professional of long term solutions to work with.

cont. on p42

... cont A hand-held Edge Bander can also be used to apply an A.B.S, P.V.C or even timber edging (if thin enough) to the exposed cut edge of the cabinet. The big advantages of a hand-held edge bander are speed, drying time and cleanliness. The CONTURO K.A.65 from Festool is versatile providing use for edging bevels, a variety of colours for the adhesive, tight radii and, of course, the K.A.65 can be operated hand-held and used as a stationary machine. To show how innovative the CONTURO K.A.65 is, it can even be used for Polyurethane adhesive, the only hand-held edge bander to enable a waterproof bond.

The CONTURO K.A.65 can edge boards from 18mm – 65mm so the capacity is ahead of any competition but the advantages are numerous, such as using the digital read out to set the temperature so that the E.V.A adhesive is applied at exactly the correct temperature to ensure that the best bond is achieved with the substrate. The E.V.A adhesive is supplied in block form rather than pellets so the adhesive is heated as and when required. The other advantage of the digital read out is it shows how many metres can be applied with the adhesive in the machine. This allows the cost of adhesive to be known and catered for when pricing a job. The adhesive is applied in lines to ensure an even spread rather than a ‘smear’ and again this helps to achieve a perfect bond. The CONTURO K.A.65 also has another claim to fame and that is changing the colour of the adhesive to suit the colour of the surface material. A choice of four colours are available: White, Natural, Brown and Black.

The CONTURO K.A.65 makes this a simple process just by making some adjustments to the settings on the machine and then inserting the colour chosen and pushing the old colour through the gluing system until the new colour comes through. The big advantage is that it is a clean and easy process to carry out even the digital screen will prompt what is needed

Festool takes a system approach to everything that it produces and the CONTURO K.A.65 is no exception. Edge-banding within Festool goes by the phrase ‘The Perfect Edge’. It is not just a machine but a series of solutions to the commonly accepted issues when working with pre-finished materials, the Festool solution to the adhesive is just one innovative answer. If you then add the accessory sets from Festool for trimming and polishing the edge and putting a radius cut to an edge we can then see that it is the complete answer and also a complete system to work with efficiently. Festool even produces a book called ‘The Perfect Edge’ which provides all the necessary information to work with the K.A.65.

www.festool.co.uk