Magnetic shims

[Walt]

I'm looking for a set of magnetic shims for my dado stack. I'm tired of having the dang shims fall down onto the threads and get caught as I'm trying to tighten up the stack. I've seen them before (may have been at a show) but I'm having a problem finding them now.

I've found one hit for them on Google

. One local hardware store seemed to know what they were but didn't have any. The guys at Rockler hadn't heard of them and could not seem to understand their purpose. Woodcraft's site doesn't have any.

Anyone know of more sources for these? I will probably order them from the site above but I'm a little puzzled on why they seem to be a complete mystery to most places.

[Bob S.]

Walt,

May I suggest that the magnetic shims won't help a bit. I have the Freud and magnetized the shims myself thinking that this would help. Nope - they still get caught and with them magnetized it's even harder to remove them. It's only a problem with the ones that are less than .010".

My little trick is to use 3 pieces of tape:

Masking tape = .004" Packing tape = .003" Scotch tape = .002"

Goes on quickly, stays put and easy to come off - no more crinkled shims.

Bob S.

[Bob Gramza]

[Pounds on Wood]

Hmm, maybe we are all too spoiled and expect instant gratification!?!

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[Pounds on Wood]

Sorry, posted that to the wrong thread. No offense intended.

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[Walt]

Thanks for the tip. I would be a little concerned with compression though (at least for the masking tape). It seems like it would be quite easy to tighten things down a bit much and turn .004 into .003.

I guess once you have your width set and the blade tightened down it shouldn't matter though. Just a little bit of variability during setup but we should be measuring the cut, not the stack width. :)

I'll prolly give the shims a try though ($10 from Grizzly, no biggie) just to satisfy my curiousity.

walt

[John Crea]

Replace all the OLD smoke alarms with modern ones that function like you want

Of course, you may have to rewire the alarm system as well to get this "feature"

John