The miter gauge that comes with the shop Smith is nice, it has a built in clamp for holding the work while you push it through. But if I needed anything other than a square cut I needed to get Sue to set the angle for me. I decided to buy one with a detent. I picked out a nice looking Incra from the Grizzly catalog and ordered it on line. When It came in I was happy as a clam. I unpacked it in the house and with a little reading help from Sue performed a couple of small assembly steps. Then it was out to the shop. Aarg. It didn't fit, or as Archie Campbell would have put it it fidden't dit. I had thought the slots were standard 3/4 inch wide. I got out the digital calipers and found the bar on the Incra gauge was 0.7475 inches and the slots on the shop Smith table were 0.7320. I was stymied by a lousy 15 and a half thousands. What to do? Send it back. No, I'll figure out something. Grind out the slots on the shop smith table. Probably not doable with the necessary precision. Same for grinding down the bar. Then it hit me. a couple of months ago shop Smith had had a sale on things they called shop helpers. They were small things you would use to build shop made jigs. There were things like T tracks, the T nuts to go in the tracks, bolts with knobs instead of heads, and yes, a couple of miter gauge bars. The bar on the Incra miter gauge had several extra holes in it, this is typical where a manufacturer uses one standard part to assemble several different products. I marked the ones that had screws in them and proceeded to remove the bar from the miter gauge. Then I set the two bars side by side to see what holes would line up. One actually did, it was oversized with a well for a nut underneath, kind of like a countersink but with a flat bottom. I'm sure it has a name but I don't know what it is. The hole being oversized turned out to be an advantage in the end. One of the Incra bolts had it's threaded portion smaller than the upper part and this just fit the oversized hole in the shop smith bar. Can you say lucky? The hole in the Incra bar was tapped. I put the bolt through the shop smith bar and threaded into the hole in the Incra bar. That held everything in registration. I clamped the other end to keep it from rotating and only had 3 holes to drill and tap. I selected bits that would go through the tapped holes in the Incra bar without needing to drill out any of the threads. I used these to drill just enough to mark the location of the holes. Then I separated the two bars and finished drilling the holes in the shop smith bar. To drill for tapping I stepped up to the next size that wouldn't go through the threaded holes but were still smaller than the clearance hole for that sized screw. I needed to tap 10 - 24 and quarter - 20. Lucky or a packrat? The 10 - 24 tap I had left over from another project about 40 years ago and the quarter - 20 was one that belonged to my dad. I'll bet it hadn't tasted metal in 60 years. I never throw anything away. I clamped the bars together again so the threaded holes in the Incra bar would guide the tap as it cut the threads in the shop smith bar. No doubt I did some damage to the threads in the Incra bar but it will likely never be used for that purpose again. Throw it away? Never. OK, this is getting pretty long. With all holes drilled and tapped I put the gauge back together and walla, or what ever that french word is. The oversized hole was the pivot point of the detent stop. That meant I could perform a fine adjustment so the detent stops would be right on. This new miter gauge is money and effort well spent. It has detent stops every 5 degrees with a special one at 22.5 degrees. I also bought a heavy duty tennoning jig like the one Norm uses. I will have to perform the same kind of transplant surgery on it but it is completely doable. Never give up and never throw anything away.
Regards. Max. K 4 O D S. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Transistor site http://www.funwithtransistors.net Vacuum tube site: http://www.funwithtubes.net Music site: http://www.maxsmusicplace.com To subscribe to the fun with tubes group send an email to, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
