James Carmichael
03-21-2007, 12:30 PM
Thanks to a very helpful post on another forum, I was able to enlarge the slots on my old Emerson-built Craftsman:
Cast iron scrapes very easily. Google will show various tutorials on making a cast-iron scraper from a file, but I found that a round-nose HSS scraper for a wood lathe works very well (if I were working wider areas, I'd use something with a much larger radius on the end).
About 5-minutes of VERY light scraping on one side only of each slot opened them up enough to accept my soon-to-be-gloated Jessem Mite-r-excel.
I don't claim to be an expert after 10-minutes of scraping, so YMMV, but the work was pretty much like paring out a dado with a chisel, except the scraper is held about 45-degrees to the work surface. Since I had no way of ensuring the scraped side of the slot stayed parallel to the other, I scraped about 1" at a time from one side of the slot, just enough to allow the miter gauge bar to fit.
This was a pretty exciting discovery for me as I'm attempting to put together a decent table saw for as little money as possible, and the Jessem miter gauge was a major find on CraigsList. I was bummed at the prospect of not being able to use it.
The talley thus far:
TableSaw (Craftsman 298761) : $150 on CL
Jet Fence : $80 on Ebay
PALS alignment blocks: : $11 Woodcraft Clearance
4' Link Belt : $21.50
Rockler/Jessem Mite-r-excel : $100 on CL (new in box)
Cast iron scrapes very easily. Google will show various tutorials on making a cast-iron scraper from a file, but I found that a round-nose HSS scraper for a wood lathe works very well (if I were working wider areas, I'd use something with a much larger radius on the end).
About 5-minutes of VERY light scraping on one side only of each slot opened them up enough to accept my soon-to-be-gloated Jessem Mite-r-excel.
I don't claim to be an expert after 10-minutes of scraping, so YMMV, but the work was pretty much like paring out a dado with a chisel, except the scraper is held about 45-degrees to the work surface. Since I had no way of ensuring the scraped side of the slot stayed parallel to the other, I scraped about 1" at a time from one side of the slot, just enough to allow the miter gauge bar to fit.
This was a pretty exciting discovery for me as I'm attempting to put together a decent table saw for as little money as possible, and the Jessem miter gauge was a major find on CraigsList. I was bummed at the prospect of not being able to use it.
The talley thus far:
TableSaw (Craftsman 298761) : $150 on CL
Jet Fence : $80 on Ebay
PALS alignment blocks: : $11 Woodcraft Clearance
4' Link Belt : $21.50
Rockler/Jessem Mite-r-excel : $100 on CL (new in box)