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Thread: Squaring my Incra miter guage - a different way

  1. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Grant Wilkinson View Post
    I want to thank both of you again. I'm really not trying to be stubborn here. It just comes across that way.

    I'm sitting here with pieces of paper representing saw blades, miter slots, miter gauges and chunks of wood. At some point, the light bulb will come on and I'll get it. The damn thing is that I do quite a bit of flat work. It simply has never occurred to me that having the saw blade anything but parallel to the miter slot is no big deal, at least when it comes to the accuracy of the angle of the cut.

    Interestingly, the author of the video that started all this discussion is mistaken. He says that his method of dialing in a miter gauge depends on the miter slot and the blade being parallel.

    Take care, and thanks for the discussion.
    I wouldn't say it's no big deal to be out of alignment (unless we're talking a couple of thousandths), just that that's not the reference point people need to use for crosscuts. As Lee points out, an out of alignment blade will lead to the top face of the piece of wood being longer than the bottom face after a cut, though that's generally a minor issue in most realistic scenarios. And the cut will still be 90º to the edge even with the misalignment

    So good blade alignment is important, it's just that aligning your miter fence to your blade isn't the important part of getting a square cut. If your blade is out of alignment and you reference off that, all you're doing is taking one error and adding it to your miter gauge. Whereas if you reference your miter fence off the slot, you know that's correct regardless of what else is going on.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Parks View Post
    I use this method to square the cross cut fences on my slider because it is so quick and accurate. Woodpeckers are offering a new one time tool that is ideal for the job, a phenolic 18" square. The thickness of it will make it easy to use the DI which with thin bladed squares can be a bit painful.
    I don't have a slider, but I like the fat blades on the WP squares for this method:

    https://www.woodpeck.com/1281.html

  3. #33
    Lee has hit on a point that I don't think others have considered. On a table where the blade is not perpendicular to the miter slot (let's say for sake of argument that the miter guide is 90% to the slot), the lower the blade, and the less of a full cut the blade makes, the more the top of the cut is narrower than the bottom of the cut (as in a cove cut where the travel of the wood is skewed from the blade). This results in the edge of the cut not being vertically straight and completely 90% to the table. It's actually less of an issue of parallelism between the edge of the cut and the blade or miter slot but more that the edge of the cut-off end of the wood being not flat vertically. Having said that, most cuts are made where the top of the blade is above the wood (for a through cut-off), so the "cove effect" is hardly noticeable.

    I think all of the other comments are treating the saw blade more like a bandsaw blade and not like a round object.

    Just my 2 cents.

  4. #34
    I think the important thing to remember is that referencing the miter gauge off a misaligned blade does nothing to correct the problem of misalignment and it just introduces another unrelated problem. To use an extreme example, if your blade is 1º off of your miter slot and you set your miter gauge to 89º in an effort to align it with the blade you're not going to get a 90º cut; you'll end up with an 89º cut AND a cove cut on the end.

    Given that, they should be treated as separate issues. So when aligning a miter gauge, the slot should be the reference point.

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Glen Gunderson View Post
    So when aligning a miter gauge, the slot should be the reference point.
    The miter slot should be the reference point for miter gauge squareness and alignment of the blade and fence. You can't adjust the slot location on many saws. There are some saws that have the saw trunions mounted to the cabinet and not the table that you move the table to align to the saw blade. Then everything else gets aligned to the miter slot.
    Lee Schierer
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  6. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Schierer View Post
    The miter slot should be the reference point for miter gauge squareness and alignment of the blade and fence. You can't adjust the slot location on many saws. There are some saws that have the saw trunions mounted to the cabinet and not the table that you move the table to align to the saw blade. Then everything else gets aligned to the miter slot.
    Very true. I should've said that when aligning a miter gauge, the slot (and not the blade) should be the reference point. Everything should be referenced off the miter slot.

  7. #37
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    My blade and fence were aligned to the miter slot in my Unisaw as perfectly as I could get them using a dial indicator. I use my MiterSet gauge to set the miter gauge to 90 degrees, or any other angle that I may want, in 1/2 degree increments. The five cut test for 90 degrees comes out perfect after doing this.

    Charley

  8. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by Charles Lent View Post
    I use my MiterSet gauge to set the miter gauge to 90 degrees,
    I didn't want to get into a discussion of the miterset as that's been done to death and I started this thread to show a brilliant alternative to the 5 cut method but the miterset isn't recommended for the Incras and Kregs. Here is a quote from their website
    "MiterSet is meant to be used with a standard miter gauge. It does not work with some of the large precision gauges from Incra and Kreg."

    The reason is basically due to the expansion rings or screws that come with the Incras and Kregs which don't provide a consistent snug fit in the miterset slot. I originally bought a miterset to align my Incra gauge easily but I ended up selling it due to inconsistencies. Even that disclaimer, which was added to their website after I bought it, confirmed those inconsistencies. Brian's dial indicator method has provided the simplicity I was looking for. Also following the fruitful discussions above about blade/slot/fence alignment, check out this video which clearly shows why the slot has to be the reference point
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrTeFQ0iQ5k&t=8s
    Last edited by Johnny Barr; 02-20-2018 at 5:59 AM.

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