Spent $600 on a Festool router and it humbled me fast

I finally pulled the trigger on that Festool router after 15 years of making do with a beat up Craftsman I got from my uncle. First job with it was a set of shaker doors for a client in Tacoma, and I figured the machine would do half the thinking for me. Nope. That thing is so precise it exposed every little flaw in my setup, my fence was off by a hair and it made me look like an amateur on the first two panels. I ended up spending another $80 on a proper Incra fence to get the most out of it, plus a full afternoon redoing my workflow. It's a great tool, but the cost was really buying a mirror for my own sloppy habits. Has anyone else dropped big money on a top tier tool and then had to relearn their whole game because of it? Or am I just the only one who thought the router would fix my mistakes for me?

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jordan_white2mo ago

Used to think dropping cash on a good tool meant instant better work. Now I get it, it just shows you exactly where you screw up. Pretty humbling way to spend six hundred bucks but at least now I actually know my setup is dialed.

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