Brewing Master

Question:

After reading about your alignment tools I was hoping you all could help me.  I just bought and set up my very first table saw – a Jet 5hp Tablesaw.  I’ve read that the alignment of the blade, fence and miter system needs to be very precise or kickback becomes a very real concern.  Could you recommend any good tools, techniques, books or web sites were a beginner like myself might find enlightenment? Thanks Rick

Response:

John, This may sound like "motherhood and apple pie", but I think it’s easy to lose sight of. If you get as much pleasure from building your tools/jigs as from building with your tools, the home brew jigs can be every bit as good. The TS Aligner and A-Line-It buy you flexiblity and versatility (which takes a lot of time to build into your own jigs, or requires multiple jigs), durability (if that is a concern), and most of all the savings of time required to design and build your own. If time is money, buy a jig.  If you prefer building furniture to jigs, buy a jig.  If building jigs is part of your joy, you can’t put a price tag on that time — kind of like the MasterCard ad! –Wayne – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – There was a thread tonight on the TS Aligner Jr.  I’ve looked at that and also the A-Line-It system that Woodcraft sells.  Both of these are rather expensive tools.  There is also the Superbar for roughly half the price.  My question is this.. has anyone ever compared them?  Any pros and cons? Are they really better than a piece of MDF mounted on a steel bar for the miter slot with the dial indicator then mounted on the MDF?  Are they really worth 10x the price of the of the home made solution?  ($5 for the Woodpeck bar, $8 for the dial indicator and a couple of bucks worth of wood and screws) TIA, John

– (Change "nospam" to "wcannon" for e-mail)

Response:

Hey, that’s a pretty nice setup, Ken. Should work well with the $26 Starrett dial indicator I got off eBay [drive-by gloat].  :) – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I use a dial indicator to check trunnion alignment, blade runout, and fence alignment to the miter gauge slots. The carrier for the dial indicator is a piece of MDF with a miter gauge bar containing spring loaded ball bearings to keep the bar aligned with the slot. A small piece of steel screwed to the top of the MDF allows the magnetic base of the dial indicator to be used. Works well — here are some photos: http://home.earthlink.net/~kvaughn65/dial_indicator.jpg http://home.earthlink.net/~kvaughn65/carrier_base.jpg — Ken Vaughn Visit My Workshop:  http://home.earthlink.net/~kvaughn65/ There was a thread tonight on the TS Aligner Jr.  I’ve looked at that and also the A-Line-It system that Woodcraft sells.  Both of these are rather expensive tools.  There is also the Superbar for roughly half the price. My question is this.. has anyone ever compared them?  Any pros and cons? Are they really better than a piece of MDF mounted on a steel bar for the miter slot with the dial indicator then mounted on the MDF?  Are they really worth 10x the price of the of the home made solution?  ($5 for the Woodpeck bar, $8 for the dial indicator and a couple of bucks worth of wood and screws) TIA, John

Response:

Two books to recommend: a) The Tablesaw Book, by Roger Cliffe. b) The accurate Tabel saw, by ian Kirby. I own the TS Aligner Junior, which I find a great tool to aid in checking and obtaining alignment; see it here at http://www.ts-aligner.com/ There’s a review of the TS Aligner Jr. at: http://www.woodworking.org/WC/GArchive99/10_31tsalign_mull.html Finally, I recommend getting the upgrade items Woodcraft sells for tablesaws:  machined pulleys, PALS (which allow easier alignment of the saw blade to the table), and link belts.         — Andy Barss

Response:

There was a thread tonight on the TS Aligner Jr.  I’ve looked at that and also the A-Line-It system that Woodcraft sells.  Both of these are rather expensive tools.  There is also the Superbar for roughly half the price.  My question is this.. has anyone ever compared them?  Any pros and cons? Are they really better than a piece of MDF mounted on a steel bar for the miter slot with the dial indicator then mounted on the MDF?  Are they really worth 10x the price of the of the home made solution?  ($5 for the Woodpeck bar, $8 for the dial indicator and a couple of bucks worth of wood and screws) TIA, John

Response:

There was a thread tonight on the TS Aligner Jr.  I’ve looked at that and also the A-Line-It system that Woodcraft sells.  Both of these are rather expensive tools.  There is also the Superbar for roughly half the price.  My question is this.. has anyone ever compared them?  Any pros and cons? Are they really better than a piece of MDF mounted on a steel bar for the miter slot with the dial indicator then mounted on the MDF?  Are they really worth 10x the price of the of the home made solution?  ($5 for the Woodpeck bar, $8 for the dial indicator and a couple of bucks worth of wood and screws)

I got the free video for the TS Aligner Jr (which I’ve since passed on to another interested person).  It looks well made and well thought out. I came to the conclusion that the one thing I couldn’t do as well with scrap wood and a cheap dial indicator was the angle measurements.  If you do a lot of mitering or other angled cuts it’s probably worthwhile. I don’t, so I’m sticking with the cheapskate solution. —

Response:

There was a thread tonight on the TS Aligner Jr.  I’ve looked at that and also the A-Line-It system that Woodcraft sells.  Both of these are rather expensive tools.  There is also the Superbar for roughly half the price.  My question is this.. has anyone ever compared them?  Any pros and cons?

I have used the TS-Aligner but not the others.  From what I can see of the others they essentially do some of what the TS-Aligner does but not all of it.  For the money spent, the TS-Aligner is the better deal because of it’s versatility. *If* the others were closer in line with what they were worth I might have a different opinion. Are they really better than a piece of MDF mounted on a steel bar for the miter slot with the dial indicator then mounted on the MDF?

The MDF and a dial indicator is a fantastic idea and in fact Ed Bennett even mentions making something like this on the TS-Aligner site.  This ho-made set up pretty much makes the A-Line-It and Super Bar obsolete, but, as I mentioned before, the TS-Alginer does more. Are they really worth 10x the price of the of the home made solution?   ($5 for the Woodpeck bar, $8 for the dial indicator and a couple of bucks worth of wood and screws)

There is a comparison of the TS-Aligner and the other devices on Ed’s Web site.  He even compares it to a DI-Onna-Stick.  Check it out. TIA,

YAW UA100

Response:

There was a thread tonight on the TS Aligner Jr.  I’ve looked at that and also the A-Line-It system that Woodcraft sells.  Both of these are rather expensive tools.  There is also the Superbar for roughly half the price.  My question is this.. has anyone ever compared them?  Any pros and cons? Are they really better than a piece of MDF mounted on a steel bar for the miter slot with the dial indicator then mounted on the MDF?  Are they really worth 10x the price of the of the home made solution?  ($5 for the Woodpeck bar, $8 for the dial indicator and a couple of bucks worth of wood and screws) TIA, John

John, I use my dial indicator mounted on a sliding homemade jig and am able to align my saw to better than 0.001". Once I got the hang of it I can now do an alignment in about 15 minutes. I have no opinion on the commercial tools you mention other than the PALS will eliminate the shifting of the trunnion bolts while tightening them. — Steve Strickland, Puzzlecraft www.puzzlecraft.com

Response:

I use a dial indicator to check trunnion alignment, blade runout, and fence alignment to the miter gauge slots. The carrier for the dial indicator is a piece of MDF with a miter gauge bar containing spring loaded ball bearings to keep the bar aligned with the slot. A small piece of steel screwed to the top of the MDF allows the magnetic base of the dial indicator to be used. Works well — here are some photos: http://home.earthlink.net/~kvaughn65/dial_indicator.jpg http://home.earthlink.net/~kvaughn65/carrier_base.jpg — Ken Vaughn Visit My Workshop:  http://home.earthlink.net/~kvaughn65/

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – There was a thread tonight on the TS Aligner Jr.  I’ve looked at that and also the A-Line-It system that Woodcraft sells.  Both of these are rather expensive tools.  There is also the Superbar for roughly half the price. My question is this.. has anyone ever compared them?  Any pros and cons? Are they really better than a piece of MDF mounted on a steel bar for the miter slot with the dial indicator then mounted on the MDF?  Are they really worth 10x the price of the of the home made solution?  ($5 for the Woodpeck bar, $8 for the dial indicator and a couple of bucks worth of wood and screws) TIA, John

Response:

My experience: 1)  The PALS adjustments work great; 2)  I originally attached the dial indicator to a piece of aluminum angle stock, which was in turn attached to a miter-slot runner made of UHMW polyethylene.  DON’T use a runner made of polyethylene, it allows too much movement.  Now I just clamp the aluminum angle stock to the face of the miter bar. 3)  The dial indicator I bought (from Grizzley) has a mount on the back of the housing.  The mount doesn’t allow the indicator to be mounted flat and low to the table. 4)  Starrett (through Grainger) sells a variety of tips for dial indicators. I found a 1/4" flat tip is much easier to use and more accurate when measuring runout on the teeth of blades than the pointed tip that came with the indicator. -JBB

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