Forget why I was doing something so stupid, but for some reason I felt was good enough at the time, I was tapping with a hammer around the throat plate on my Steel City granite-topped saw and chipped the stone. Tiny chip, but the sharp edges are very sensitive to impacts.
A valuable lesson, with essentially no impact on the top, but I will never go near it with a hammer again, I tell you whut.
Don't think a cast top woulda cared about what I was doing.
D'ohBoy
There also seem to be a lot of accessories that use a magnet to hold to the top. So do the advantages of granite outweigh the inability to use these?
I sometimes like to use the magnetic base for my dial indicator to "remember" the position of my fence so I can come back to it at after performing some other cut (if its presence doesn't interfere in some way). Sometimes this allows me to insert spacer blocks (like those brass setup gauges) to offset the fence a specific distance from a known position, then return to the original position once the secondary cut is performed. Can't do that with a granite top.
iron is the way the go....IF done right. Nothing worse than a bad piece of cast iron, and even though it seems to be getting better across the board, there are still some pretty crappy castings out there. But if flat is what you're after and something that stays flat, granite is your solution. These mill- wrights don't haul those slabs of reference granite around for no reason. Besides, granite is pretty and it doesn't rust.
As for the ability to use magnets? I haven't used a magnetic anything on a TS top in 30+ years. Jointers and planers yes.
I'd think Soapstone or quartz is best. Soapstone is used in labs and can be filed and routed.....
Mart> >> "Puckdropper" wrote
And fired. It hardens to about 6.
Featherboard in a mitre slot then?
phorbin wrote in news:MPG.23d71646c9f27f109898d3 @news.execulink.com:
I believe we had soapstone benches in a lab I worked in about 35 years ago. I liked it until I spilled some radioactive phosphate solution on it. I couldn't get it removed from the bench as it had soaked in. Now P32 radiation is not innocuous but rather hard - fairly energetic beta radiation, just electrons no gamma radiation. That is also the nice thing - you can easily find it, in contrast to tritium which is sneaky soft. The other good thing about P32 is that it has a short half-life of only 14 days. So my protection was a couple of glass plates taped onto the bench to absorb the radiation while the P32 decayed. After a good half year, the P32 had dissipated (the rule of thumb is 13 times the half life of 14 days and there is no radioactivity anymore, you can do the math), and the glass plates could be removed. In the meantime work could just go on without worry.
But I still don't like soapstone benches for a lab. Yes, you are suppsed to use plastic-lined absorbant "diapers", but that will not prevent every spill onto the bench.
Yup... I just never trusted the magnetic ones. They're okay for light work, I suppose, and better than none, but for that positive security, I prefer the mitre-slot.
I bought these ones this past summer and they worked well without any slipping that I noticed. I suppose with enough leverage, most anything magnetic can be moved, but the convenience of being able to place them most anywhere on the table saw negated any worry I might have had about slipping.
how do t slots cut in a granite top last? i would think one could pop the side of them out with an energetic t bolt tightening. granite isn't that strong when it's milled thinly.
I'll keep this in mind for when I build that plutonium armoire. :-)
Works for me.. maybe the belt grinder table, too?
Further south, almost to Cabo for that... We're only 120 miles south of the CA/AZ border and on the Sea of Cortez.. Lots of sea bass, shrimp, etc. here though..
Maybe the belt grinder table, too? (bandsaw is in the shop)
mac
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Damn good point! Don't know if the saw would be as much fun with out my Mag-lock feather boards and jigs..
mac
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Gag me with a push stick..... that's so 90's.. rofl
mac
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I definitely trust the mag loc not to move.. Two 30mm rare earth magnets on each of the two locks on that puppy..
I trust it more than a miter slot, unless the jig or feather board has slot adjusters..
mac
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I've bought 3 of these since:
Lee Valley's website says it uses magnetic clamps with a combined breakaway strength of 210 lb. I figure if they fail to do the job they're designed for, then I'm not cutting my wood properly (or safely) and there's a problem somewhere else.
-MIKE- wrote in news:gkl616$5gk$ snipped-for-privacy@news.motzarella.org:
Plutonium is not too radioactive, ie radiation from plutonium is not that strong (I believe). Pure uranium is very weak alpha radiation, just about harmless. One of the biggest problems of plutonium is that is very toxic especially the dust. Of course, if you exceed the critical mass, there is going to be a lot of ashes.
If you read this with a lisp, it's much funnier.
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