Episode 34 Woodpeckers Saw Gauge from Professional Woodworkers Supplies
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Filed under: Manufactures and Suppliers, Podcast | Tagged: Saw Gauge
The content is fine but unfortunately the delivery is laboured and boring spoiling the absorption of fact
Perhaps buy a DVD then – with a budget of $0, I do what I can with the resources I have, and that includes the presenter. It is podcasting after all, not a commercial Pay TV station.
Thanks Stuart for the introduction to the Saw Gauge … it was very helpful for me to see it in action and I appreciate the time you took to put the clip together. Great value for what I paid for it. The saw gauge will find a place in my shop. By the way I found the content great and absorbed it all. It’s a function of how a person approaches it I find. Cheers and happy wood working.
My thanks as well. I bought the thing not having a clue how to use it. I thought that when it got here it would be obvious, but I was completely mystified. I now realize how great a purchase I made.
But, yeah, it could have been edited down quite a bit.
Just bought the gauge based on your review. Thank you for taking the time to do this. It is very helpful to see the item being used in a real shop, and you showed a couple of ways to use it that I hadn’t thought of.
Stuart, thank you for taking the time and effort to put together the podcast for the saw gauge. Like others, you clued me into ways to use the gauge I had not previously thought of before. We are amateurs at some time in our endeavors and I daresay that few of us could have put together a better presentation. Thanks and God Bless.
Hi Stu.
You mentioed in the beginning that the tool has accurate positioning and repeatability. I wonder if this is true since the dial indicator is allowed to tilt freely. Also, I did not see you demonstrate any procedure that required this “repeatability”. Your fence positioning demonstration certainly doesn’t require it. One can just re-zero the indicator before moving the fence. My first take on this tool is that the “sawtooth” positioning design is crude and cumbersome. It’s plain to see from your demo that these huge increments are pertty darn inconvenient. It’s not at all like the Incra Jig, which has very small (1/32″) increments.
Taking measurements with a dial indicator tilted is likely to give you a lot of bad readings. To measure the flange runout (yes, it’s called the “arbor flange”, not the “arbor stop”) with better accuracy, you can tilt the arbor to match the tilt in the dial indicator. I suppose if the jig had a better horizontal positioning mechanism, then you wouldn’t have to tilt the indicator when measuring arbor runout.
I noticed something pretty awful when you were demonstrating the fence alignment. The back of the jig ran over the area where the throat plate goes. At the time you had the throat plate removed so you literally had to hold up the jig as it passed over this area. Even if the throat plate were installed, it would likely disturb the readings on the dial indicator (unless it were leveled very carefully – something that this jug can’t help you do). You would think that the makers wouldn’t have made such a glaring design flaw. Basically, the jig can’t help you determine if your fence is straight, and forces you to assume it is for alignment.
I would like to know how this jig compares to a home made dial indicator jig. What advantage does it give me over attaching a dial indicator to a wooden base that slides in the miter slot? My home made jig can do everything the Woodpecker jig does. It is infinitely adjustable (not huge clunky steps). It uses the same cheap Chinese dial indicator. I can add parts to make it more useful (like a bracket to hold the indicator vertically for height gauge measurements). And, it costs a heck of a lot less. If I really wanted to spend money on a dial indicator jig, I could do a lot better for the money.
My favorite web site for table saw alignment information is tablesawalignment.com. You should check it out.
Thanks,
Bill
I am amazed that in the entire video, NO mention was made about how to correct fence missalignment. Further, NO mention was made on one of the major problems with ALL table saws; and that is missalignment of the blade and the miter gauge slot.
In other words there is little (if anything) the average home woodworker can do about arbor run out (vertical or horizontal), but blade/miter gauge slot missalignment CAN be corrected.
I believe MOST of the video should have been about this malady, thus little if any concerning arbor runout.. Also, aligning a fence to the miter gauge slot with a blade that has NOT been aligned with the miter gauge slot causes heaps of problems with table saws.
Sadder is the fact, that on many table saws, correcting blade missaglinment is a cumbersome chore. The video should have gone into this in detail, because it is vital that this be corrected, if a woodworker wants consistently good saw cuts.
I found the video quit boring, as too much time was spent (and the delivery was too slow) over mundane things particularly when no mention was given to the above.
I am going to purchase the tool, BUT my main concern, is getting the blade AND the fence dead parallel with the miter gauge slot, since there is little the average woodworker can do about most of the other things mentioned in the video.
Also, blade runout (while in the at rest position) will often tend to true out once it reaches proper speed due to inertia, etc, more or less. So measuring the runout of a still blade I see as little value.
carl dixon
Talk about an unhappy customer – guess you want your money back? Oh wait……
But let’s have a look at any points raised:
Correcting fence misalignment: we did cover how the gauge shows fence misalignment, and by referring to your saw manual, you can see how to correct your fence for misalignment, now you know where and how much there is.
Misalignment of blade and mitre gauge slot: thought this was pretty obvious – check front and back of blade using the same tooth on the blade and then refer to your saw manual how your saw can be corrected (and if you set your own saw up, this is one of the steps you will have done already). Just checked – it was mentioned in the video (guess you slept through that point)
Arbor runout: For a new saw, it means you can check if it is within tolerances stated in the manual, and if not, talk with the supplier. For a second hand saw, checking this is one thing I would do before deciding to buy. And if it is your own saw and it has this problem, then it isn’t that big a deal to buy (or get made) a replacement arbor.
If you have had a serious kickback or some other significant event with your saw, then knowing how to check the arbor is important to see if the machine has been damaged. But perhaps as you have decided, there is nothing that can be done about it anyway so who cares if the blade has an arbor-caused runout.
Blade runout: If you look at my section on “Battle of the Blades”, you’d see there is a significant impact on cut quality based on blade runout. If you don’t care about quality of cut, then sure, don’t check the blade runout. Again, I base my decisions on what is a quality vs cheap blade in part based on runout – there is a reason why expensive blades care whether there is a lot of runout or not.
The video was not about setting up your saw, it was all about the Woodpeckers Saw Gauge.
Sorry you found the video boring. I suggest in that case you don’t bother watching any of the other videos then!