Miter bars for Table Saw??

[Bob G.]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 20:33:12 GMT, [e-mail] (Doug Miller) wrote: .

================== I am not about to argue (hate to loose) that Home Depots' bar stock has anywhere near the tolerances of a bar made by Incra ...

BUT the simple fact is that I have never had any problems fitting Home Depots' or other hardware store bar stock to any of the slots on my Tablesaws or other machines... Thay may not be perfectly straight but getting a slop free fit is not hard to do... I can not recall a single screwed up cut in close to 40 years of woodworking that I could blame on a sled or jig that used a cheap piece of bar stock to ride on...That is not to say that I did not have to "work" the bar stock to make it fit....

Just my opinion...

Bob Griffiths

[George E. Cawthon]

Sure you can and you better. But I can divorce you!

The books I have read indicate that is a standard procedure and certainly works for me. You whack it but rather specifically you dimple it enough so that any looseness disappears.

It's about trolls.

[Doug Miller]

This is false too, by the way. A 0.740 bar *obviously* fits into a 0.750 slot, and as long as it's straight it can be used to make straight cuts, by keeping it in firm contact with one side of the slot throughout the cut. It makes no difference that it's undersized.

Do you really mean to suggest that straightness is irrelevant to proper fit?

Ooooooh, are you going to killfile me? I'm trembling. Tell you what: let's KF each other. Then I won't have to read your nonsense, and you can post nonsense to your heart's content without having to worry about seeing me expose it for what it is.

As I have pointed out several times, a tight fit does not necessarily mean a good fit. By simply "whacking it until it fits" you have *no* assurance that the bar is straight, and thus *no* assurance of getting straight cuts. Particularly if one is using your bizarre definition of "fits".

And your point would be...? If you want me to add you to the list, George, just come out and say so.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.

[George E. Cawthon]

Yeah, you caught me, I should have said a "tight" fit. I think most woodworkers would assume that tightness is include in the idea of "fit.:" No one would say a board fit in a rabbet if the rabbet was 1/8" greater than the thickness of the board.

Of course. If you have a groove in an arc and a piece of metal in an arc fits the groove, what does straightness have to do with the fit?

You can have a piece of metal crooked as hell, maybe a little bend every 1/4-1/2 inch and it can still fit in a groove with no discernable slop. Fit and straight are simply two independent elements.

I don't kill file anyone.

Huh? did you just switch sides?

Ok, you need help to understand, it's about trolls. Who is the troll, maybe you?

[Doug Miller]

We're talking about table saw miter slots and the bars that fit in them... or had you forgotten?

We're talking about table saw miter slots, remember? I've never seen a table saw miter slot that was anything other than a straight line, or a reasonable approximation of one. Perhaps yours is different, I don't know.

That's simply false, as I have already illustrated at least once.

As you like. Keep posting baloney, then, and I'll keep calling it baloney.

Nope. Maybe you should pay closer attention.

Ummm... I was starting to think you might be trolling, George, posting this obvious nonsense and continuing to argue that it's correct, long after your errors have been pointed out to you.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

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[JMartin957]

Can't speak for Home Depot bar stock, but I've got an old Ryerson book in front of me that gives their width tolerance for cold finished low carbon steel bars as +0, -.003" for .750" and under. Since that's their tolerance, most of their stock is better than that. No straightness tolerances specified.

How much do you think your miter slot varies from end to end?

John Martin

[George E. Cawthon]

Bye now teacher, you have a happy life.

[Bob G.]

======================================== NO it is not false... And that is why your illustration has been chalanged...

You can drill a 1/4 hole every 1/2 inch along both sides (on the edges) of the miter bar and the damn thing will still fit and slid without slop....The first and last inch may have slop...but that is not a problem at all...

Bob Griffiths

[Doug Miller]

Yes, it is. If the bar is not straight, it *cannot* fit properly into a straight slot. And thus "fit" and "straight" are not independent.

I don't consider either the curved miter slots, or the zig-zag miter bars, of George's fevered imagination to be a challenge to my illustration.

You're confusing straight with flat. If the bar is straight, and you drill a bunch of holes along the edges, it's *still* straight. It just isn't flat any more.

You can contrive as many bizarre situations as you want, it still won't change the fact that a miter bar *must* be reasonably close to straight if you want to get cuts that are likewise reasonably close to straight.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

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[Lawrence Wasserman]

If the bar is .740 & the slot .750 there will be slop regardless of whether the bar is straight or not. At any rate, a piece of cold-rolled 3/4 X 1/4 will be damn close to .750 IME and fit as tightly as a factory miter gauge bar, for whatever that's worth.

[Doug Miller]

True, but if it's straight it can be held firmly against one side of the miter slot and achieve a straight cut despite being undersized.

Nobody ever questioned how close the Home Cheapo bar stock is to 0.750. The question I raised was, how close is it to *straight*? The closer it is to the exact width of the miter slot, the straighter it had better be, or it won't fit, e.g. a bar 0.749" wide that's bowed 0.002" out of straight is going to get wedged before it makes it halfway through the slot.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.