A practical guide to the dog-hole grid, top materials, and components from Festool, Woodpeckers, Bessey, and Dash-Board Portable Workshop — so you can build a table that works with any track saw.
Every track saw brand eventually runs into the same problem: you need a flat, dead-square, portable surface with a way to hold work down and index your guide rail. Festool solved this decades ago with the MFT/3, and its 20mm hole grid on 96mm centers became the de facto standard that most of the accessory market builds around. The good news for anyone not fully invested in one saw brand is that the table itself doesn't care what saw you own — the hole pattern is universal, and the accessory ecosystem built around it now spans Festool, Woodpeckers, Bessey, Dash-Board Portable Workshop, and dozens of smaller manufacturers.
This guide walks through what actually makes an MFT-style table work, compares the components available from the major players, and lays out a practical, brand-agnostic build process — along with real build videos so you can see the methods in action.
What's in this guide
- Why build your own instead of buying one
- The hole grid: 20mm vs. 3/4 inch, and why it matters
- Choosing your tabletop material and thickness
- Drilling an accurate hole pattern (no CNC required)
- Component comparison: Festool, Woodpeckers, Bessey, Dash-Board
- Step-by-step build outline
- Video walkthroughs
- FAQ
Why build your own instead of buying one
A factory Festool MFT/3 is a genuinely well-engineered table, but a shop-built version has three advantages worth considering before you buy one outright:
- Size. The factory MFT/3 top measures roughly 45-9/16" x 30-7/16", which is excellent for a job-site or small-shop footprint but limits how large a workpiece you can fully support. A shop-built table can be sized to your space and your typical material.
- Material and durability. The factory top is MDF, which is sacrificial by design — Festool's own literature notes you can flip it once one face wears out. Baltic birch plywood, used by Woodpeckers and Dash-Board for their tops, holds up to repeated clamping longer, at a higher material cost.
- Cost per square foot of clamping surface. Once you own a drilling jig, adding a second or third gridded surface (an outfeed table, an assembly table, a torsion box) costs only material and time, not another full table purchase.
The tradeoff is time and the need for genuine precision in the hole layout — sloppy hole spacing is the single most common complaint in shop-built MFT projects, and it's the reason dedicated drilling jigs exist at all.
The hole grid: 20mm vs. 3/4 inch, and why it matters
Before cutting anything, decide which hole standard you're building to, because dogs, clamps, and fences are not interchangeable between the two:
- 20mm holes on 96mm centers. This is the Festool standard and the one the majority of aftermarket accessories — Woodpeckers, Bessey, and Dash-Board — are built around. If you want the widest possible accessory selection, this is the safer choice.
- 3/4 inch holes, also commonly on 96mm centers. Kreg's Adaptive Cutting System uses this standard. It's a smaller ecosystem, but the holes are easier to drill accurately with widely available 3/4" Forstner bits.
Tolerance matters more than the nominal size. Woodworkers building their own 20mm tops consistently report that the actual working diameter needs to land in a narrow band — commonly cited fitted diameters run from roughly 19.8mm to about 19.95mm depending on the dog brand — for dogs to seat snugly without being loose or impossible to insert. If you already own dogs or clamps from a specific brand, drill a few test holes in scrap and fit your actual hardware before committing to a full sheet.
Choosing your tabletop material and thickness
Two materials dominate shop-built and commercial tops:
| Material | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| MDF | Inexpensive, machines cleanly, flat out of the sheet, easy to re-drill. Used on the factory Festool MFT/3. | Wears faster under repeated clamping; not moisture-resistant; heavier than plywood per thickness. |
| Baltic birch plywood | More durable under repeated clamp and dog use; dimensionally stable. Used by Woodpeckers (1" thick with laminate both sides) and Dash-Board. | More expensive; slightly more prone to blowout when drilling if not backed properly. |
On thickness, the working range that keeps you compatible with the widest range of clamps is roughly 18–24mm (about 3/4" to 1"). Go much thicker than 25mm and you risk losing compatibility with L-shaped, hook-style clamps that need to rotate 90 degrees once inserted through the hole — a documented complaint from woodworkers who modified thicker existing benches to add a 20mm grid. Go much thinner and the top can flex or fail to hold dogs securely.
Drilling an accurate hole pattern (no CNC required)
You have two realistic paths to an accurate grid:
1. Woodpeckers Hole Boring Jig
This is a 3/8" thick solid phenolic, CNC-machined template that indexes off the edge of your table. You place it, rout a group of holes using a router with a Porter-Cable–style guide bushing and a 1/2" straight or upcut spiral bit, then use the already-cut holes to index the jig across the rest of the surface. It supports both the 20mm and 3/4" hole standards with different bushings and index pins, so it's a reasonable choice if you're not fully committed to one system yet.
Order the Woodpeckers Hole Boring Jig
2. Hand-built plywood/MDF template + router or drill
Several experienced woodworkers skip proprietary jigs entirely and build a simple shop-made template from scrap MDF, laying out hole centers with a ruler and square, then drilling with a Forstner bit and a drill guide (or routing with a guide bushing for cleaner, more perpendicular holes). This is the lowest-cost route but demands careful, repeated measurement, since small errors compound across a large grid.
Whichever method you choose, drill test holes in scrap first and fit the actual dogs and clamps you plan to use before committing to your finished top. Hole diameter tolerance is brand- and dog-specific, and getting it right on scrap costs nothing.
Component comparison: Festool, Woodpeckers, Bessey, Dash-Board
Once your grid is drilled, the accessory ecosystem is genuinely mix-and-match. Here's what each of these four manufacturers actually contributes to a build:
Festool: The reference standard
Festool's MFT/3 established the 20mm/96mm grid as the industry benchmark. Even if you never buy a Festool table, their spec is the one your build should probably match: 20mm hole diameter, 96mm on-center spacing, a perforated top rated for workpieces up to roughly 78mm thick and 700mm wide, and T-groove side channels for joining tables together with optional connectors. Festool's own clamp line (screw clamps, quick-action lever clamps, fixed clamps) slides directly into the grid and is worth studying even if you buy other brands, since most third-party clamps are designed to match its footprint.
Woodpeckers: Precision tops and workholding
Woodpeckers (Strongsville, Ohio) offers several pieces directly relevant to a shop build:
- Track Clamp Bench Tops — 1" thick Baltic Birch plywood tops with black micro-dot Formica laminate on both faces, CNC-machined with both 20mm dog holes and a track-slot system that accepts any track-saw-style clamp (Festool, Makita, Triton, and similar), letting you position clamps anywhere along the track instead of only every 96mm. Offered in sizes matched to Woodpeckers' own router table legs and to the Festool MFT footprint, plus two additional stand-alone sizes (24"x48" and 24"x32") if you want to build your own base.
- Hole Boring Jig — covered above; the tool that lets you drill your own grid, in either 20mm or 3/4" standard.
- MFT Layout & Assembly Square — a 3/4"-thick solid phenolic square with two 20mm locating dogs, used to square your fence and guide rail to the hole grid.
Bessey: Clamping hardware for the grid
Bessey doesn't sell a table, but its clamp line is a direct, often lower-cost alternative or supplement to Festool's own MFT clamps. Bessey's multifunction table clamp sets (including the WNS20-MFT, BH20-MFT, and KLI20-MFT lines) are built to work with any matrix table with 20mm diameter holes, explicitly including the Festool MFT, and are rated for work surfaces 19–25mm thick — which lines up with the recommended DIY top thickness range above. Bessey's K-Body parallel clamps, while not designed to insert into the grid, are widely used alongside an MFT-style table for glue-ups, using the dog holes as square reference points.
Dash-Board Portable Workshop: A rigid, full-length alternative table
The Dash-Board Portable Workshop MFT Table is worth understanding even if you're building your own top, because its design choices illustrate what a "next step up" from a basic MFT grid looks like. The Dash-Board bench pairs a 20mm dog hole grid with dual integrated clamp tracks (similar in concept to the Woodpeckers Track Clamp top), a Baltic birch plywood surface, and an aluminum-extrusion frame with carbon fiber bracing. Its Guide Rail Bracket Set is a side-mounted, pivoting hinge system explicitly built to work with Festool, Makita, Bosch, Mafell, DeWalt, Metabo, Powertec, and Triton rails (Kreg by special order) — genuinely brand-agnostic hardware. According to the manufacturer, the system supports rips up to 100" (2540mm) and crosscuts over 48" (1219mm) on a work surface roughly twice the length of a stock Festool MFT/3. Dash-Board has also documented that its Guide Rail Brackets and Track Stars are designed to mount on other tables entirely, including a factory Festool MFT/3, the older Festool 1080, and shop-built T-slot extrusion frames using 8mm-slot series such as 1530-1545 or 4080 — which makes it a relevant option if you're building a custom base and want a ready-made bracket system rather than fabricating your own.
Quick reference: standard hole spec
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Hole diameter (Festool/most 20mm accessories) | 20mm nominal (fitted diameter for snug dogs commonly ~19.8–19.95mm depending on brand) |
| Hole spacing | 96mm on center, both directions |
| Alternative standard (Kreg) | 3/4" holes, also commonly on 96mm centers |
| Recommended top thickness | 18–24mm (~3/4"–1") |
| Factory Festool MFT/3 load rating | ~120kg / 264 lb |
Step-by-step build outline
This is a general sequence; adjust dimensions to your space and material on hand.
- Decide on your hole standard (20mm/96mm is the safer default for accessory availability) and, ideally, buy a few dogs or clamps from the brand you intend to use most before drilling anything.
- Choose your top material and size. 3/4" MDF or Baltic birch plywood, sized to your available base or bench footprint. Bigger is not always better — match it to the workpieces you actually cut.
- Square and true your blank. Every layout method depends on starting from a perfectly square panel; check diagonals before you drill a single hole.
- Lay out and drill your grid using the Woodpeckers Hole Boring Jig or a shop-made template, testing fit with your actual dogs on scrap first.
- Chamfer the hole edges lightly to ease dog insertion and reduce splintering at the top surface.
- Build or select your base. This can be a simple 2x4/plywood torsion box on sawhorses, folding steel bench legs, or a purpose-built accessory base like Woodpeckers' router table stands or a shop-built T-slot extrusion frame compatible with Dash-Board's bracket hardware.
- Mount your guide rail bracket or fence system if you want repeatable square crosscuts without re-measuring every time. Multiple manufacturers, including Dash-Board, sell brackets designed to work across saw brands.
- Add a sacrificial strip or top sheet in your typical cut line so you're not cutting into the primary grid.
- Fit your clamps, dogs, and squares, and calibrate your fence/rail to the grid using a layout square before your first real cut.
Video walkthroughs
These are real builds and product demonstrations worth watching before you start cutting:
"Stop Paying for Overpriced MFT Table Tops, Build Your Own For Less with Woodpeckers Hole Boring Jig" — demonstrates using the Woodpeckers jig to drill a full grid from scratch.
"Drilling New MFT Tabletop With Hole Boring Jig | Deep Dive" — a more detailed walkthrough of the same jig, including router bit and bushing setup.
A companion base-build video referenced alongside Rag 'n' Bone Brown's "Making an MFT Top" project, which drills a full grid using shop-made tools rather than a commercial jig or CNC.
Frequently Asked Questions
What size dog holes does a DIY MFT table need?
Most builders use 20mm diameter holes on 96mm centers — the spacing Festool popularized and that most third-party clamps, dogs, and accessories are built around. Kreg offers a 3/4" alternative, also commonly on 96mm centers. Pick one standard and stay with it; dogs and clamps aren't interchangeable between the two hole sizes.
How thick should the tabletop be?
18 to 24mm (roughly 3/4" to 1") is the practical range. Thinner tops can sag and won't hold dogs securely; tops thicker than about 25mm can prevent hook-style clamps — including common L-shaped track saw clamps — from rotating and seating fully in the hole.
What's the best material for a shop-built MFT top?
MDF and Baltic birch plywood are the two common choices. MDF is inexpensive, machines cleanly, and is what Festool uses on the factory MFT/3, but it wears with repeated clamping and isn't moisture-resistant. Baltic birch plywood, used by Woodpeckers and Dash-Board, holds up longer under repeated clamping and is more dimensionally stable, at a higher material cost.
Can I use Festool clamps and accessories on a shop-built table?
Yes, provided the holes are drilled to the correct diameter on 96mm centers. Festool clamps, Bessey's MFT clamp line, Woodpeckers' dogs and wedges, and most third-party 20mm accessories are built to that common grid and will work on any table drilled to the same spec, regardless of brand.
Do I need a CNC machine to build an accurate MFT top?
No. Drilling guide systems such as the Woodpeckers Hole Boring Jig are built specifically to let woodworkers achieve near-CNC hole placement with a router and no CNC equipment. Some woodworkers also have a local CNC shop cut a top from a supplied file if they want guaranteed tolerances without doing the layout themselves.
Is a shop-built MFT table compatible with any track saw brand?
The dog-hole grid itself is brand-agnostic — it's just a hole pattern. What varies by brand is the guide rail bracket or fence system used to square and index the saw's track. Dash-Board Portable Workshop, for example, designs its guide rail brackets to work with Festool, Makita, Milwaukee, DeWalt and other brands of rails, so a shop-built table paired with the right bracket set can support essentially any track saw on the market.
How do I keep the saw kerf from cutting through the tabletop?
Two common approaches: build a dedicated sacrificial strip or channel that the blade tracks into so the main grid is never cut, or lay a thin, replaceable sacrificial sheet on top of the table that absorbs the kerf and gets swapped out periodically. Woodpeckers' Track Clamp Bench Tops also route the clamp tracks so the saw kerf can land in an open track rather than solid material.
Specifications referenced in this guide come from manufacturer product pages and documentation for Festool, Woodpeckers, Bessey, and Dash-Board Portable Workshop, along with woodworking community discussion reflecting real-world build tolerances. Verify current specs and pricing directly with each manufacturer before purchasing, as products and specifications are periodically updated.