I purchased this tool to measure accurate angles for making segmented turnings. With the required digital caliper it was about $225. I can’t seem to get any more accurate results than with my $2.00 plastic protractor! I have a good solid Incra miter guage and a Forest blade in a cabinet style table saw. You have to set the guage using the right miter slot, and then transfer the guage to the left slot. THey should be parrallel of course. The president of the company told me that one should be able to measure the actual angle of the cut produced, and then go back and tweak the setting according to the disparity between the desired and actual cut. I can’t seem to do this. Can anyone give me advice on the use of this instrument, or should I just return it for a refund. Thanks a lot.
Jay Stallman
Replies
Which Incra MG do you have? What's keeping it (all by itself) from providing you with accurate angles? Admittedly, I've only used mine for 90 and 45 degree cuts, but it's perfect, perfect, perfect, left or right slot, and it's the 1000 model.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
The incra jig is only as good as the accuracy to which you set it initially at 90 degrees. If you are 1/100 of a degree off, all the other angles are referenced to that angle and they will also be off, although consistently by 1/100 of a degree. With multisegmented turnings there may be 16 sides or more, and when glued up, small errors are additive. Also, the incra jig is inicremental and doesn't do 1/2 or 1/4 degree cuts. (eg. you need 11.25 degrees to get 16 sides). Please tell me how you set your incra jig to a perfect 90 degrees to start. Thanks a lot.
Jay
Hi Jay,
With regard to 1/2 & 1/4 degree cuts, the 1000 has an engraved stainless steel 1/4-degree vernier scale. Again, I've not had to use these fine gradations, but they're available. I can take a look later tonight and see how they're used. The Incra 3000 has 1/2-degree hard sets:
http://www.woodpeck.com/miter3000.html
As far as setting to 90 degrees goes, I used a simple plastic drafting triangle to get my initial blade adjustment, then proceeded to do test cuts and fine adjustments until I got it perfect (you know, cut a piece, turn half of it over, and re-match the cut, any gap indicates not 90 degrees yet). With this method and only one crosscut, a 100th degree error would combine to be twice as bit when the wood's turned over. Could I see that? Dunno! Might take another pile of scrap wood to get it that close. But I'm willing to bet that once you got the gauge set to 90 + 1/100th, it would work flawlessly from then on.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
The one I have is called "The miter guage by Incra". It must have been the first model out, about a year and a half ago. It does have the capacity to do 1/2 degree cuts, but not 1/4 degree or finer, at least not using the teeth. It is continueously variable, but then you have to make lots of trial and error scrap cuts, which is what I was trying to avoid. I would have to cut at least 4 sides (8 trial cuts) and asseble those 4 pieces to see if they add up to 90 degrees between my jointer table and fence, in order to test a 16 side object. Any way you know of to avoid this tedious process?
Jay
Well, I stand before you to confess, I must have hallucinated that 1/4degree thing. Don't know why -- haven't had anything to drink in 3 weeks, and no other mind-altering drugs, but there is no 1/4-degree thingie on the Incra. Sorry! I'll make it up by doing a search for Bridge City's phone number.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Edited 8/2/2002 11:23:43 PM ET by forest_girl
OK, I've done my penance (sp?) Here are the search results:
Bridge City Tool Works5820 Ne HassaloPORTLAND, OR 97213-3644
PH: 503.282.6997forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Forest girl, you can set up your mitre gauge to read to a quarter of a degree. i also have the 1000 and all you do is line up one of the graduations so it falls in between the 1/2 degree marks on the pointer. there's a whole page on it in the owners manual.
Hi Jay,
I don't think there is anything that will guarantee you a perfect setup first time and, as others have noted, your angle-setting device is just one of several components that all have to be set correctly.
For segmented turning I added a mitre fence to my crosscut sled, following Kevin Neelley's plans (here: http://www.turnedwood.com/index.shtml). It really didn't take long to get the sled set correctly (defn.: I turned the piece without it exploding and I can't see or feel any gaps between the segments). Having just gone through making a segmented bowl once, the sled is fast enough to set up and accurate enough. I'll be looking for a way of improving the speed and accuracy of glueing the rings together first. Anybody got any ideas for clamping different diameter rings together for gluing?
Graeme
> ...Anybody got any ideas for clamping different diameter rings together for gluing?
I've had pretty good luck using those metal hose clamps they sell in plumbing stores, Home Depot, etc. If you can't find ones big enough, you can unscrew two of them and screw the male ends into the female ends making them about as big as you want. Glue doesn't seem to stick to them very well so they're not too hard to clean up.
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Thanks Dennis,
Thus far I've glued up the rings in stages - quarters, then halves, sand to square up the ends and glue to complete rings. If I decide that takes too long the hose clamp sounds like a good idea for gluing up entire rings in one go. It should also work as a form for gluing same-size rings together but the problem I'm having is gluing together 2 rings of different diameters. The segment boundaries need to stay aligned but as soon as I put pressure on they want to slide around. I haven't figured out a way to hold the rings in alignment while clamping them.
Graeme
Graeme;
I should have explained - I'm staving up barrel type forms moreso than what I guess is actually called segmented turning. Thus my work pieces are full ht of the piece itself. The hose clamps work well in this situation as you can stand them up inside one clamp at the base until you get them all loosely assembled then slip more clamps on.
Another thing that was suggested to me but I haven't tried it is old bicycle inner tubes. You can cut straight across (radially to the tube circle) to get small "rubber bands". Angle the cut more and more to get progressively larger ones.
I'm afraid I'm a bit sloppy when it comes to glue-up and wrapping my assembly in rubber bands sounds like it would result in a bigger mess than I usually make.
I go through a lot of wax paper keeping glue off my workbench!
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Maybe this is why Bridge City is out of business. They specialized in very fancy tools to accomplish simple opperations. Having said that, I have one of their saddle squares and I love it. Too bad they bit the dust, but, these days, people aren't spending money on the fancy stuff.
Brandon, Lincoln City, OR
I think you need to go to this page :
http://www.bridgecitytools.com. I believe they are still in business. If not this is the first I heard of it. Joe
Edited 7/30/2002 8:38:27 PM ET by JOEGROUT
Hi Joe,
I hope I'm wrong, but I got my information from a pretty good source. I've tried a couple of times to get their website up, but without success. I knew they were having trouble. They moved last year to biger, nicer digs in Portland and were just getting settled when 9/11 happened. They've been trying to pull it together since then. But had many layoffs, etc.
Brandon
Just got a hold of someone today at Bridge City today. The said that they are restructuring andwill be closed until September 4, 2002.
Hank
Personally I'd return it. I saw it demonstrated at a show and it's over kill for woodworkers. I measure the wood and not the blade to set my angles. Most saw blades aren't perfectly flat so it's better to reference from the wood to tweak adjustments
http://www.starrett.com/catalog/catalog/groupf.asp?GroupID=148
I use a device similar to the above posted but it's made by Enco and cost me $40. I do metal work as well and it suits my needs just fine. Frankly I think the gadgets for woodworking has gotten out of control. When I started WW 30 years ago we made a lot of our own special jigs and tools. I even do a lot of machine tuning for other WW and get just as good results without the TS Aligner and such.
I never heard of Enco. Could you give me more specific catalog information so I could get a look at its specifications and get ordering info?
Jay
Should have thought of that...I get all the woodworking and metalworking catalogs but then again I'm a purchasing agent at my shop. http://www.use-enco.com No Good source for a lot of inexpensive measuring stuff. If you go for the protractor get the vernier type over the dial type. I tried a dial one and it was off and the vernier is very simple to tranfere weird angles so many different ways.
http://www.wttool.com/cgi-bin/miva?Merchant2/merchant.mv+Screen=PROD&Store_Code=WT&Product_Code=1280-0006
I use this company a lot too. Bevel protractor for $34.95
Rick
Jayst, as far as i know, you are supposed to use trig to figure out exactly what angle you are reading. since you have an incra mitre guage i would return it provided that your mitre gauge is giving you acceptable results. if it's not then talk to incra. One very important lesson i learned from doing some work in a tool and die shop is that you are only as accurate as your weakest link. as we all know, woodworking machinery isn't as precise as metalworking machinery so money spent on extremely accurate measuring tools is not necessary if your machinery can't hold the same tolerances that they are made to. if you really want accuracy then what you need is a sine bar and a set of gauge blocks. that's what a machine shop will use when they need extremely precise angles, but like i said before, it would make no sense because no woodworking machine is built to operate with that kind of precision. hope this helps
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