Beginners project drilling *Miter Gauge Extensions*

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Welcome beginners and those who are somewhere along the way in the hobby of woodworking.

This will be a little about what we are making, how we are measuring, how we are drilling an item all shopsmith owners should have in their shop(s), the miter gauge extension.

Not sure what we are talking about?

This one I will answer for you, if I don't answer some question you have from here on out please ask. Go to here and look for item C

http://www.shopsmith.com/ownersite/catalog/swd_mitergauge.htm

Current price $18.62 for those that are wondering.

First we need a plan so we can find the dimensions to build one of these. It just happens shopsmith provides one:

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So why am I building one of these? Boy you people are good at asking questions! Well I have 500 that is located some 400 miles away and when I purchased and restored it I found it was missing one of these. Then I recently purchased a shopsmith bandsaw, and guess what they are a handy useful item on a bandsaw too. We will come back to the bandsaw issues in a little while.

Next we should talk about material, generically speaking they are made from a hardwood. You can use other material but mostly you want something that is not warped/twisted/deformed in anyway. Keep this in mind when picking your material. I will be using some oak flooring my brother got for me off a job site, yes people still use 1" + thick oak for flooring... rich people I would guess.

When I was set up in table saw mode I cut a pile of wood for various projects, Nice when you are doing a large number of small jobs and don't mind stacking up the wood for future processing. You can decide to do crosscuts then ripping then dado's/grooves etc and then it is just a matter of making sure you mark things so you don't get confused later.

I didn't have the camera out that day so you will have to trust me that I cut stock for two standard size ones and one larger one for the bandsaw.

The length in the drawing shows up as variable but the one shopsmith sells it is 12". So I had two blanks that were 1-1/8" thick by 3" tall by 12" long. Again I will defer the larger one for the bandsaw to a point later.

Before this begins to feel like a book we will stop for now. Picking up on the measuring for the holes is coming right up.

Ed

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Anyone want to ask why when it says a thickness of 3/4" I'm ending up with ones that are 1-1/8" thick?

If you do then I will answer, the thickness is also variable. However when I go looking for the carriage bolts I had better remember to get longer ones! If you are building your first one you might want to stay with the 3/4" thickness.

Time for the measuring.

This part if quite forgiving and being off a little is no big thing. But you will get more out of it if you take your time and try to get it as close as you can. I had been a woodworker for years before I got a shopsmith but to lean the system I built most of the jig/fixtures out of the PTWFE. You get double duty out of doing that, first you learn the machine and second you have some handy accessories when you are done.

http://www.shopsmith.com/academy/introduction.htm

Now starts the pictures, everyone worth a 1000 words so see this is a book.

These first picture are depicting tools you might have in your shop. If you have none of these then I would say you need to head for a hardware store first thing in the morning.

Please note the depictions are a little less then perfect but since I'm the camera man and the instructor at the same time and have only two hands... What I would like them to show is the rule again the wood surface with the pencil angled into the steel edge. Anyway you get what you get.

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Here you can see the first mark I'm making, it is done by adjusting the rule out 1" and the square against this reference surface. You might have to practice this a few times as the rule has to be just a little short of the 1" line for the pencil to mark at the 1" point. Again if you chose this way to do the marking you will be close enough.

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Close enough because you will now measure to the second hole, the 1" plus the hole to hole space of 3-5/8" or 4-5/8" on the rule. If the pencil was off on the first mark it will be the same amount off on this second mark due to the same error.

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A common tool for this sort of measuring is the tape measure, again measuring out the first inch and marking.

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The second mark again would be at 4-5/8" despite me showing more like 4-1/2"... can't say I haven't done something dumb like mis-measuring but in this case I was looking through the camera and it looked closer then it was...

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From the marks you need to make lines and it is best if they are square, any square will do so long as it close for this project.

We have run out of picture space so go on to the next post where we will look at yet a few more ways to do the measuring.

Ed

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I'm sure you may have an old plastic school ruler that has sat in a drawer since 1976 but you might want to upgrade to something a little more fancy for your woodworking. What is pictured next is what is commonly called hook ruler. The little hook on the end does the function of the clip on the tape measure or head on the square.

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Yes you can just use your finger and stick the ruler up against it and measure away, tempting no doubt but if you want to do it that way you might not want to go on to the next part of this post.

Yes we are getting to the topic of the INCRA T-rule that I mini reviewed here:

https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewtopic.php?t=8659

You have been warned. Don't go any further if you are offended by such tools. Final warning, a precision tool is going to be shown and used coming up next.


Still with me? Look now you have me asking questions...

This first shot show me testing the .5mm pencil and making a line. Firth thing that came up was the fact I need a hand to hold the pencil and one to hold the t-rule and another to hold the work piece. Yea that can't be done without a little help. So who wants to know the shop-tip of how to solve this problem? We will get to that in a moment after you take a look at this picture.

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Maybe this close up will help you see how this product works.

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Still waiting on the shop-tip right? OK, check the next picture where you see the green shelf liner that provides the extra hand to hold the work piece in place while you mark it up.

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From here will will go to the drill press, yes the holes are coming up real soon now.

Ed

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As a general point, you want to have a sacrificial top cover for your main table, shown in the next picture. You can use the area where the table insert is or the more open area if you remove the table insert but as the bit exits the work piece you are very likely to get tear out, while have the sacrificial is more like to give you clean holes.

It is also nice to use the rip fence as a guide. The holes are 1-1/2" up so if the fence is set to give you a hole that is 1-1/2" away you can then just worry about getting the location of the hole on just one axes. Just in case make sure you mark which side of the work pieces was against the fence so we can use that to our advantage when we drill the through hole.

This is a good time to bring up the fact that the work piece should be 3" tall and if it is perfect then it will not matter which side goes against the fence, right? Maybe, you have two factors working against you. First you may not be right on the 3" height and second your measurement of 1-1/2" from the fence might not be right on... either or both off and you will not get as good a result as if you just keep the same side against the fence... remember I told you so if it goes wrong. This project is forgiving but again we are using this for practice, some other projects will not be that forgiving.

In this case I have adjusted the fence to what looks like about 1-1/2" and mounted a 5/8" Forstner bit.

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Now keeping in mind the fence is controlling that 1-1/2" dimension and you are controlling the cross direction it is a good idea to do a "touch". This means bringing the drill bit into contact with the workpiece and leave a small mark. You should be able to see it in this photo.

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Pretty close and this might even work for this project but you can do better. A small adjustment and look where the touch is now, that looks good to me.

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Next we will work on setting how deep the bit will cut, bet you can't wait.

Ed

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Hi,

I don't want to make this post confusing but some of you eagle eyes are going to notice that I once was working with some thick oak and now it looks more like it is 3/4" thick..... I'm blaming it on shop gremlins, they somehow managed to make this change while I wasn't looking. OK maybe it shrunk or maybe the wife put it in the dryer... One thing I'm sure of it wasn't because I forgot that I might have reduced the thickness the other day when I was processing it, nope can't be that. Honestly I didn't notice until I started processing the pictures for this post and could see the markings on the rip fence... if I would have done this on a 520 I wouldn't have caught myself in this error.

Now on to setting the depth. One way is to bring the bit down to the surface of the workpiece then set the depth gauge on the shopsmith. Simple and effective and pictured below.

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It is always good to do a visual check, here you see the bit is going to be cutting deeper then it needs to. Yes it would still work but then remember once again we are trying to use this to improve our skill.

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One other way that also works well is to take a piece of material that is the same as the remaining amount of material you want to leave and set the depth at that depth. Here we have 3/4" material and want a hole 1/4" deep, that means if we use a piece of 1/2" plywood things should work out well. Just another option you might want to think about.

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I see it is 3:00 in the morning so I think the rest of the information is going to have to wait for until I'm up and around later today.

Ed

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The next operation is to really drill the holes. But we have not talked about what speed we have selected. I have a chart I keep handy but in this case I just turned it down to slow (700 rpm). You will get to the point that some of this becomes second nature but until then get a chart to have in the shop.

One other pointer, on smaller Forstner bits you need to raise the bit to clear the shavings, this also helps prevent to much heat build up. Since this hole is only 1/4" deep and the bit size of 5/8" you can do a continues feed without things heating up too much. (BTW the cart says the bit should be running at 500 rpm.)

Let's look at the first hole.

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Second hole same as the first...

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If you are making more then one you will want to drill them all now. Make sure you do not get wood chips behind (fence side) or under the workpiece, they can change the position of the work piece and cause you to drill the holes in the wrong places. A shop brush can be useful in getting all the chips out of the way or there is always the shop vac.

At this point with all the countersunk holes drilled it is time to do the through holes. For me this was in the form of removing the 5/8" bit and then installing a 1/4" brad point bit. You could use a standard twist drill here, just might not get as clean a hole.

If you don't have any Forstner bits in your collection I think about adding them really soon. Even a set of 4 goes a long way towards upgrading what you can do in the shop. Same with the brad bits, once you start drilling the cleaner holes you will more then likely want a whole set.

Do not move the fence. We will use the fence again and it will make sure the holes are still at the 1-1/2" up from the bottom. Again make sure the same side of the material is against the fence (see previous postings for details as to why you need to do this).

Make sure you reset the depth control so the bit goes though the material, and kick the rpm up to "D" or so.

If you happen to be using the brad point drill you can "feel" the hole left by the previous drilling operation and that will be right on. If you are unsure do a touch and see where the hole is going to be. You want it right on the center of the previous operation. In this photo you can see what I mean.

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By now you should have the basics of how the drilling part of this project is done. We are next going to talk about the bandsaw model, yes I know I've been putting you off on that for several posts... and it is happening again as we will cover that in the next posting.

Ed

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This is what the bandsaw versions plans look like:

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You can check out the PTWFE section on bandsaws here:

http://www.shopsmith.com/academy/bandsaw/index.htm

As you can see one version is the same as what we were building anyway. The other two are slightly different, one in length and the other in length and height.

Given my limited selection of oak on hand my "other version" is not one of the ones shown. I was able to get a piece that was 3-7/16" by 18" out of scrap. The size is no major factor in what we are talking about because just like the other two "standard" ones the holes are still 1-1/2" up from the bottom, the holes sizes are the same as is the hole to hole spacing.

What you need to take from this is that you can make a lot of changes as to what your version looks like and make it more useful for you. Sometimes it is what materials you have to work with as in my case working with scrap wood, or maybe you feel the need for a taller version to do some resawing on your bandsaw, again it can be fun to experiment.

I know, enough words, let's get to some pictures.

These are the three with all holes drilled and ready to go:

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This next shot show the difference in height between the standard version and the only slightly taller bandsaw version I made.

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In the next post you can see how they might look in action, that is coming right up in the next post.

Ed

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This first picture shows the extension mounted off to the right and the miter gauge in the right slot.

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If you move the miter gauge to the left slot you can simply flip the extension over and that can be seen here:

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Were you wanting to have more support of course you can have the longer extension towards the blade. Of course this also means your extension will have a saw cut in it when you are done. No big thing now that you know how to make more, right? A few cuts will not make much of a difference but sometime it might be chewed up enough to warrant a replacement.

Moving to the bandsaw, this is the standard version in position to be a fence.

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Next we have a longer/higher version mounted in standard position.

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Since a little experimentation is in order you will notice the longer fence has two sets of holes. I added these to see how I liked having a longer fence in front of the blade. It seems I might like it but I've never actually tried it so now that I have the opportunity I'm going to give it a shot. If I think of it I will report back at some point and let you know how that worked out.

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I have one more section I want to add, have to see when I have the time to do that. In the mean time feel free to ask questions if you have them.

Ed

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GREAT PRESENTATION Ed. Thanks for doing this.
Now I've ONLY had my SS for 31 years and never used an extension, so WHY wood I?

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GREAT PRESENTATION Ed. Thanks for doing this.
Now I've ONLY had my SS for 31 years and never used an extension, so WHY wood I?

As a quick answer, I've had mine for 35 years, it is rare that I don't use an extension on mine, so why don't you use yours?

I keep one on my miter gauge and only remove it if I have to for some other operation.

But you do have a good question and I'm going to let you read about here:

http://www.shopsmith.com/academy/tblsaw ... /index.htm

Scroll down to figure 2-19 and start reading with "A miter gauge extension will also provide extra work..."

When I first started using saws in the late 50's in our downstairs shop this was not something we did. But others who were more in the know did and I picked up on doing so. By the time I started collecting tools for my shop and got a rockwell table saw I was say a 50% user, this was in the early 70's. When I got the shopsmith (brand new from shopsmith) it came with an extension and I formed the habit of just leaving it attached. I make and use specialized versions so if I had to guess I have an extension on for 95% or more of the time.

Again this is all user preference and we seem to be on opposite ends of the range. I know it hard to get us older users to change habits but if you can give using an extension a try, I think you will like it.
Ed