Thinking (was thinking) of buing a woodrat - Help!

[Aled Dafis]

The announcement of the Woodrat's new competitor, the Router Boss, has hit my tool buying plans right off track.:x

Over the past few weeks I've been reading more and more about the Woodrat and have come to the conclusion that it could be a very suitable addition to my workshop. My first intention was to buy a decent dovetail jig (Leigh or similar), but the Woodrat does so much more - mortices, tenons, sliding dovetails etc.

Having decided to go for a Woodrat, the choice was then, whether to go for the smaller or larger (w600 or w900). I'm still unsure, but am leaning towards the w900 for it's larger capacities, and I like the way that the workpiece is physically clamped on the left hand side as reference for cutting the mating piece.

My web research showed that most, if not all Woodrat owners were satisfied with their "routing platforms" and found very little negative feedback at all.

The quandary i'm now in, is that since the news of the Router boss, many Woodrat owners have commented that the Woodrat is poorly engineered, and requires fairly major fettling for it to work as it should.

Sorry for my ramblings, but shelling out this amount of cash on something that is "a kit .. to be finished off" worries me slightly.:shock:

Any comments, ramblings or advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Aled

P.S. As a little background info, I'm a hobby woodworker, an engineering/maths/science teacher by day, but have worked in engineering for a few years. I have limited time on my hands, and find that cutting these joints entirely by hand takes far too long.

 

[Escudo]

Hello there Aled,

I have a woodrat and on the whole I think it is a very handy addition to the workshop. Especially if you are limited for space.

I have used mine for cutting box joints sucessfully, although I haven't had a go at dovetails yet. I find it very easy to use for making grooves and trenches.

It is true there are problems and the work holding aspect is limited.

The new router boss looks very good. I am particularly interested in any new ideas that help with holding work pieces. I think woodrat should do more here to design and sell various different jigs etc.

In your position I would sit tight for now, the router boss may be very expensive given the fact that it will have to be imported. If not, then woodrat will have some serious competition, and there may be a few second hand machines coming on the fleebay.

Hope this helps, a hot topic for the next few weeks I would say.

Cheers, Tony.

 

[Anonymous]

The quandary i'm now in, is that since the news of the Router boss, many Woodrat owners have commented that the Woodrat is poorly engineered

On the contrary, I have always said this since receiving my Rat as it is a simple statement of fact. I would wait to see what price the Boss is marketed at over here and its availability in UK unless you are in a rush.

Also, the competition might drive the Woodrat price down :wink:

The WoodRat is fundamentally a great idea, poorly designed and manufactured down to a price (but sold above that price!!). With (quite a bit of) effort, it can be made to achieve its potential - see Aldel's site

 

[SketchUp Guru]

I never really thought of the WoodRat as poorly engineered. There are some things that could be improved but I can make a similar list for a number of tools in my shop. I'm not entirely convinced that the price is too high considering its capabilities and the cost of the machines/devices one would have to purchase to do all the things one can do with a WoodRat. Of course that argument falls apart if you already have those things.

IF you were going to buy a dovetaier with even close to the flexibility of the Rat, something to do mortises and tenons, as well as tools to make dowels and all the other things one can do with the Rat and a router, the price would climb quite rapidly above the price of the WoodRat. Add up the price for a Leigh Jig and the FMT for example and neither of those machines will make dowels. And, you need a place to use them as well as room to store them when not in use.

The other day I was working on the remote control box for my dust collector. I needed to cut a rectangular hole in the cover for the box. I considered how I could do it. I could have made a template and hand held the router. I could have made a template and used the router table (But I wouldn't have been able to see what I was doing), I could have drilled holes at the corners and sawed between them with a jigsaw (don't have one but if I did I could have done that.) but instead, I quickly screwed the cover plate to a scrap of wood which I clamped to the mortise rail on the Rat so the plate was horizontal. Then it was a simple matter of cutting to the layout lines (edges of some blue masking tape) and I was done. Very easy and quick and because the Rat is always hanging on the wall, it's always ready to go to work.

If you are interested in getting a WoodRat, do it. PLay the waiting game if you want to see what happens to the price but I wouldn't shy away from buying one at this point.

 

[ivan]

I like my woodrat and would buy one again. Extremely versatile, a very clever device. Badly engineered? Not really, it is adequate for what it was designed to do, cabinetmaking. Trouble is it's so versatile, people want to extend it's use! Want to mill plastics or aluminium? add some digital scales and improve the linear bearings and router guide.....

Worth getting the full size model if you're serious. Make sure you get the new Ali fences. If you want to do heavier work you may have tweak the linear bearings, plenty on Aldel's website on this.

It's not perfect, but significant improvement would cost a lot more!

 

[Aled Dafis]

Thanks for your replies.

Dave

IF you were going to buy a dovetaier with even close to the flexibility of the Rat, something to do mortises and tenons, as well as tools to make dowels and all the other things one can do with the Rat and a router, the price would climb quite rapidly above the price of the WoodRat. Add up the price for a Leigh Jig and the FMT for example and neither of those machines will make dowels. And, you need a place to use them as well as room to store them when not in use.

This is exactly the reasoning that bought me to the Woodrat in the first place.

The Leigh FMT and the D4 come to about £720, not to mention the extra jigs required to cut box joints and so on.

Tony

On the contrary, I have always said this since receiving my Rat as it is a simple statement of fact.

This is why i said "most" owners were satisfied. (can't find the wink emoticon, but if I had, it would be here) :wink:

I think that your comments have helped to calm my nerves, but if anyone has further comments to add, I'd be most grateful. I think that the engineering workshop at school could come in very useful.

Should any of you have a Woodrat that you'd like to sell, pop me a PM so we can discuss.

Thanks

Aled

 

[SketchUp Guru]

This is exactly the reasoning that bought me to the Woodrat in the first place.

The Leigh FMT and the D4 come to about £720, not to mention the extra jigs required to cut box joints and so on.

I bought my Rat before the FMT was introduced. I waffled back and forth between the Leigh and the Rat. Had thought I'd just buy the Leigh because there was already a large number of satisfied users. I started an online order and got as far as putting my credit card number in before backing out.

Arguments about high cost of the Rat just don't hold water in my opinion. At least not when compared to the options as I said before. You can certainly spend less on a dovetail jig--buy one of the comb-type jigs and make dovetail joints that look like the teeth on a zipper--and you can make a lot of jigs to do things the Rat does. I don't have room to store them and since a horizontal surface in my shop quickly collects stuff, I'd always be clearing a spot to use these jigs and other machines anyway.

I've been wondering if one could manage a woodworking shop without any horizontal surfaces.

 

[Aled Dafis]

Dave

I know exactly what you mean, I spent last weekend clearing out my magazine stash, and now every horizontal surface is covered in stacks of magazines, some to go to the recycling bin, others to go to school, and others to my neighbor etc.

Does mounting the Rat on a wall instantly make it into a coat rack??

Aled

 

[SketchUp Guru]

I have my WoodRat far enough from the door in my shop that I don't tend to hang my coat on it. I hang it on the bandsaw instead.

 

[motownmartin]

Hi Aled, I can't help you with the Woodrat but I can throw another option into the hat, and that would be the Incra LS Positioner, I recently got one of these and must say that I am impressed, if you take a look HERE at my attempt of cutting some dovetails, I can't tell you which is better but I'm sure some members might be able to comment.

 

[Aled Dafis]

Martin

Wow :shock: :shock: very nice dovetails!!!

What sort of money are we talking here?

I don't know much about the Incra system except that its american, quite expensive and very accurate. The positioning doodah seems that cutting dovetails on this is more like a maths/geometry exercise than woodworking?

Being american, are you stuck with imperial measurements?

I already have a very basic router table with a rubbish router fitted, and try to find any excuse not to use it. This may be the reason I had decided not to go down that route.

Again, comments are welcome

Thanks
Aled

 

[motownmartin]

Martin

Wow :shock: :shock: very nice dovetails!!!

What sort of money are we talking here?

I don't know much about the Incra system except that its american, quite expensive and very accurate. The positioning doodah seems that cutting dovetails on this is more like a maths/geometry exercise than woodworking?

Being american, are you stuck with imperial measurements?

I already have a very basic router table with a rubbish router fitted, and try to find any excuse not to use it. This may be the reason I had decided not to go down that route.

Again, comments are welcome

Thanks
Aled

Hi Aled, they start at around £130 to around £300 and yes you are stuck with imperial measurments but its not as complicated as you might think, there are 51 different templates which allow you to cut different dovetails or box joints.

 

[SketchUp Guru]

I might be wrong but I thought Incra offers metric teeth for their positioning system. Nice looking dovetails Martin.

 

[ivan]

I have one of the original Incra jigs with metric racks, and also a fence/Stop in metric. Very good at repeat positioning, but not full of absolute accuracy as advertised. For eg. a move of say 150mm nominal, can be accurately repeated, but won't be exactly the promised 150mm; this may or may not be a problem.

The incra dovetail system depends on templates, either purchased or home made whereas the Woodrat is completely flexible and cuts all manner of other joints. The woodrat is settable by eye (if I wear my glasses) to about 0.1mm.

 

[TheTiddles]

Don't get us wrong, the WoodRat is a very good piece of kit, here's a tray I threw together last week to celebrate having a planer at long last, it took no more than half an hour to cut all the rabbets and dovetails,

The thing is it's just not as good as it could be and you haven't got a choice of other makes as there aren't any. As an engineer who designs a lot of plastics the quality of those with the LittleRat is really, really bad, the untrained eye might not notice.

It could be done better for the money, a lot better

 

[motownmartin]

I might be wrong but I thought Incra offers metric teeth for their positioning system. Nice looking dovetails Martin.

Thanks Dave

As Ivan has said, Incra do provide metric, personally I don't mind imperial or metric.

Nice looking tray Mr Tiddles