Back in April, Mr. Tom Stoffel, President of Betterly Tools, offered to send a Betterly Coving Router and a Betterly Stacc-Vac Router Base to a fabricator for review. I took him up on his offer.

I felt like a kid on Christmas morning opening presents when I unboxed the Stacc-Vac base at Dani Homrich’s shop in Rochester, Michigan. I’ve seen quality tools before, but this is just ridiculous. The shiny aluminum router base is beckoning me to hurry. The vac hose is extremely high quality black plastic, very supple and firm yet perfectly flexible. The Asians better pray Betterly doesn’t move from Minnesota to Detroit and start making cars. This is how things used to be made here in the states.

I chucked a ¾” roundover bearing bit into the 3 ¼ h/p. Porter Cable router and twisted it into the S/V Base. Combined, this is a heavy unit and a bit unwieldy. I’m sure one would get used to it. I didn’t have to use the new provided vac hose as my Festool vac hose fit the base nipple perfectly. I plugged the router into the Festool vac so when I hit the router switch they both came on simultaneously.

After Dani shot that video, I remembered that I had forgotten to install the dust deflector on the base bottom which covers the bit and would have allowed even less dust to escape. Betterly claims that for every three ounces of dust on the floor, you’ll suck nearly eight pounds of dust into the vac. Watching the video, I don’t think that’s sales hype.

The weight of the machine that I was just complaining about was helpful in making an excellent edge profile. The large base makes for easy control. I did a shallow and a finished pass, with a well-worn bit each time and the resulting edge was CNC quality. I’ll bet a single pass would produce the same results. I didn’t see a plunge style S/V base in the catalog, hopefully that’s next.

Fig. 1

Not all fabrication happens at the shop. Some of us who do repairs in homes and restaurants after hours have to keep dust and chips to the absolute minimum. I have a Festool OF2000E/1 router with a plastic dust collector. I broke the plastic nipple off the dust collector the first time I tried to inset it onto the base! I repaired it but the weight of the hose put on too much strain and it eventually failed. With its usual impeccable service, Festool sent me a replacement, but the hose weight is still too great, you really have to baby it. If it fails on a repair job, it’s game over for the night, pack ‘em up, go home and reschedule. This is one rare time when I find the engineering and quality of a Festool product wanting.

Your vac hose isn’t going to budge the Stacc-Vac aluminum nipple; it will follow compliantly like it should. If you back over this thing with your truck, I’m betting you’re going to need to get a flat fixed.

These are all the chips on the floor (Fig. 1) after profiling three linear feet of ½" bullnose edge without the dust deflector installed.

Betterly tools aren’t cheap, but if you spend the money, it’s nice to know you’ve bought the best available anywhere at any price.

About the Author:  Joseph Corlett has over fourteen years experience in the solid surface industry and has written for Surface Fabrication magazine, Slippery Rock Gazette and Old House Journal. You can contact Corlett at loosedeckcannon@comcast.net