Porter Cable 42000 Template Guide Kit
I've had a 42000 template guide kit since the mid 1990's. The set works OK, but my advice is to buy another brand. The P/C kit comes in a cheap & fragile hard plastic case that must have cost all of ten cents to make and the components are held in place with inexpensive cardboard separators. In addition, after a dozen years or so, every component in my set had corroded terribly -- the metal looked similar to very old aluminum storm windows, pits and all. It's not clear why this happened, since they've never been outside the basement workshop, and no other tools corroded. The corrosion caused significant resistance when screwing on the lock-nuts. Steel wool reduced the roughness of the corrosion, but the pieces still look dreadful.
The three largest guides in the P/C set are too long for numerous dovetail jigs, such as the Leigh jig. It's possible to modify them to work with these jigs, by hack-sawing the excess length off the offending guides, flatten the cut end on a grinder and sanding the edge smooth. A no-cost approach.
If you want steel guides, the Milwaukee's 49-54-0700 set comes with a nice case, and the steel finish looks a whole lot better than P/C's. Unfortunately, the three largest guides in the Milwaukee set are also too long for many dovetail jigs
In any case, brass is a better material for guides than steel, because brass is easier on a rotating router bit if it ever touches a guide. Once, near a day's end of routing doors for hinges, my template's locking ring came loose, allowing the guide to touch the spinning bit, and the locking ring to rub against the router-bit lock nut. Since the guide and ring were brass, no noticeable damage to the bit or router occurred. Had I been using any steel template with a steel locking ring, the bit or router could have been damaged. Try "brass router template" via Goggle - and buy a kit made of solid brass, in a decent case, for less money than this set. Also check out the Woodstock International H3134 Brass Bushing set at Amazon. Porter-Cable 42000 9-Piece Template Guide Kit
I prefer brass. The Porter Cable guides are fine, they install easily, center easily, and perform flawlessly,, Most of the time. Just once in a while though, they fail completely. Steel, no matter how you protect it, will eventually corrode. Mine turned white and rusted, not all over, but on one side or the other. My guides often get removed from the case and hauled out to the job-sites while attached to the router. Early, foggy mornings and those sudden summer-time cloud bursts, expose my tools to far more of the elements than I like. So maybe,, it's my fault. But brass just hasn't let me down yet.
Search "brass template guide set" and be amazed at the difference in price and the fact of the quality of these "no-brand" guides. Occasionally you may need to shine them up a little, but being solid brass, that's not a big problem. I've used both steel and brass on door hinge templates, dovetail templates, stair tread templates and strike plate templates. Brass just slides easier, smoother. On dovetail templates, especially plastic and soft aluminum the brass guides show less wear on the surfaces that the guides contact.
I'm sorry P.C. ,,, I can't recommend these guides.
I saw a review with a problem, the steel guides were too long and reached past the bottom of the dovetail template. With brass you can simply file the guide down to size to get the right length. Simple.
I'm a multi router owner person. It seems that no matter what router I am using, they all accept the Porter Cable template guides. They work in the Dewalts, Makitas, or course the Porter Cables, as the description says, but they also work in the Fein Rt-1800, and with the Bosch routers as well with the adapter. Template guides are useful when routing out a piece of work using a template as a guide. The appropriate size guide to accomodate the size router bit, simply attaches to your plastic or metal removable center base plate, using the template guide, and a threaded metal securing ring. The gap distance between the outer edge of the template guide, and the leading edge of your router bit, is the oversize dimension you have to make your template. The template guide prevents the edge of the router bit from touching your template. The protruding nipple-collar accomplishes that. To accomplished routists that earn a duh no kidding award, but to the new guys on the block, that is key to know, and opens up a new world, and a reason to buy the kit. The Porter Cable 42000 kit is made out of white metal. Their are some manufacturers that make them out of brass, but this kit is hard to beat. The price is right, and it does the job more than adequately. My one gripe is that they are hard to remove from the metal base plate in my Fein. No way to grip the spinninng bottom that sits perfectly flush with the plate. A huge rubber eraser might help. :-) I plan on coating them with WD-40 so that ease of removal doesn't become a problem. All in all a very nice set.
The kit that I received did not appear to be cast as some of the Porter Cable sets apparently have been, but they may use stamping in their manufacturing process because they are obviously not "machined" (as in cut on a lathe). However, I found that these steel guides do not work nearly as smoothly as brass guides such as those available from Oak Park. The reason may be the cadmium plating doesn't seem to be very smooth. The brass guides are quite a bit more expensive but are very well machined. When I bought my Leigh D4 Dovetail fixture, I was advised by the Leigh rep at the woodworking show to not use the PC guides. Leigh can supply guide sets that are very high quality machined steel. I bought the Leigh guides and found that they are just as good as the Oak Park brass guides, but I still prefer brass for its smoothness. - Tool - Woodworking - 4213 - Porter Cable 7424 - Parts'
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