Replies

1. 
   hammer1 | Sep 24, 2008 02:51am | #1

   Since you are using machinery, you don't have to mark your work pieces, just measure the results. A few tools that are essential for me, are the same ones I use for most shop machine set up, 12" stainless rule, 6" engineers square and a simple set of calipers.

   Beat it to fit / Paint it to match

1. 
   Montanaman | Sep 24, 2008 07:01pm | #3

   Many thanks.  I need a set of calipers.

1. 
   roc | Sep 26, 2008 08:10am | #5

   >CalipersA nice thing to have in a caliper is a lock set screw knob. Once you get a setting you want you can set the thumb screw; otherwise your setting will creep. Use the calipers to keep checking what is coming off the saw just to be sure. A set screw in the small six inch caliper is rare though. . . . could buy bigger ones and cut the extra length off the end so they fit in your apron. The ones easily obtainable that have a set screw can be over twelve inches long. A new tool is just a blank. Make something useful out of it.The calipers with the face that look like a watch dial should have a line on the lens that you can set at your mark and come back to to see amount of error.Another way to go is get the digital ones (seems like cheating they are so easy to use). You can zero the reading where you like it. Then measure what is coming off the saw and it will show only your amount of error. One disadvantage is if your shop is cold and or the battery dies you are done until you power up/warm up.The nice thing about metal working power tools is you can then dial in your cut to on the order of .0005" increments repeatably if you know how.When the hell did table saws quit having "micrometer" adjustability. When I went to buy my table saw the salesman thought I had been dropped on my head because I kept walking all over the show room and bitching because none of the "high end" fences had this. The saws in my high school shop from the seventies did ! At least an attempt at one.Several years ago I was giving my friend a hand at his retail store for a few months and in the basement of this old store was the equivalent of a cheep portable builders table saw from the fifties sixties or seventies. Even it had a rack on the underside edge of the table that a knob with a little gear on the other end could drive the fence along by turning the knob. Want to travel fast just push the fence and the Knob whizzes along. Seems like the big stationary saws one disengaged the knob to travel fast.Once you use a metal mill or metal lathe you will know just how helpless one is without this. Bump and measure ? ? ? P A A A L E A S E . Even a digital scale without a positive (no slop) dial-able advance is just too primitive. When will the wood working machine tool manufacturers get real ? ! ? I have seen the add on doo dads; not that great compared with how nice it could be. Used to be.OK I got it out. I got it allllll out. I feel better now. Thanks for listening . . . I said thanks for listening. . . hello . . . is any one there ? Oh well.Maybe next year.

   Edited 9/26/2008 1:21 am by roc

1. 
   Montanaman | Sep 26, 2008 06:18pm | #6

   Thanks for your help.  I think the digital calipers are my weekend purchase.  My garage/shop a heat duct from the house that keeps it warm. 

    

2. 
   joinerswork | Sep 24, 2008 03:20pm | #2

   Montana,

   I lay out one piece of stock, both mortise and tenon, just as I would if cutting them by hand.  This is handy to set up by, moreso than trial and error, for me at least.  Using a marking guage with two pins (mortise guage) for off-centered mortises, and one with one pin worked from both sides of the stock to center mortises (on uniformly thicknessed stock, of course) gives a pair of lines to which you can center the motise chisel.  Ditto the layout for the tenon, gives a line to sneak up on for a trial fit in the mortise.

   A steel rule with square end is nice to make sure the fence is square to the hollow chisel.  Set the end of the rul against the fence, and slide it over til it contacts the chisel, (twist the chisel in its yoke to align without having to change the fence's distance from the chisel).

   The best final fit of tenon to mortise is by try and see, so a couple pieces of extra stock, machined at the same time as the good stuff, and squared off, can be real handy.

   Ray

1. 
   Montanaman | Sep 24, 2008 07:03pm | #4

   Many thanks.  I've got a number of these to cut so I apreciate your advise.