A view on alignment of the shopsmith.
Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2020 7:19 pm
I'm pretty persnickety when it comes to alignment and I don't really know if that is a good thing or not. I have spent the money to buy a master plate, you can see that here:
http://mastergage.com/display_product.asp?id=4
They claim .003" in both flatness and parallelism. You mount it on the saw arbor much like you would a blade. I've tested by flipping it end for end without moving anything else and found mine to be pretty much right on. An error of .003" would have shown up but I had no way of going much more then .0015" at the time I did the testing. Now I could go to .001 but don't see the point of doing that.
So you still have any errors caused by the internals of the shopsmith, ie the quill run out or bearing issues but for now we can pretty much says we don't have a better way of getting an accurate plane for that direction. It gives us a place to work from to do the alignment of the miter slots and to check the table is at 90 degrees to the plane. BTW I do this with out the insert in place so the square sets on the table and against the plate.
For squareness I have my Woodpecker 1281. I trust this much more the an angle cube or angle gauge. See details here:
https://www.woodpeck.com/woodpeckers-pr ... x-261.html
At some point it is also advisable to check just how flat your main table is. We have seen some pretty wild anomalies posted here! If you are in the norm then you should have a pretty flat table. Just make sure you don't have dips or rises where you are adjusting for the 90 degrees. For flatness I have the woodpecker SERX-24, you can see that here:
https://www.woodpeck.com/serx-straight-edge-rule.html
You will also need some feeler gauges, I have several sets and I trust all of them so I like to use this one:
https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/to ... em=86K9901
To adjust the rip fence to the miter slot I have the woodpecker saw gauge. I have the first version shown here:
https://www.woodpeck.com/woodpeckers-saw-gauge.html
This is designed to take the width errors into account when placed in the miter slot. I have measured some larger then expected errors when I was try to do this alignment with the shopsmith gauge. Don't know if that was manufacturing tolerances or wear but having to shim the part that fits in the track was not going to win any accuracy.
Even after spending this much money and taking the time to get things about as perfect as I could it was very evident that had I actually gotten things to be .000" by using the tools at hand I still wouldn't really know how far off things were, cause each part has some variance. I do shoot for a zero tolerance between the miter slot and the master plate. Then since I use the rip fence to the left I try to have the far side slightly off, .005" maximum. Often you can get less then that.
Now comes the burn. Lean on the main table................
So about enough for now. Hope this gave you some things to think about.
Ed
http://mastergage.com/display_product.asp?id=4
They claim .003" in both flatness and parallelism. You mount it on the saw arbor much like you would a blade. I've tested by flipping it end for end without moving anything else and found mine to be pretty much right on. An error of .003" would have shown up but I had no way of going much more then .0015" at the time I did the testing. Now I could go to .001 but don't see the point of doing that.
So you still have any errors caused by the internals of the shopsmith, ie the quill run out or bearing issues but for now we can pretty much says we don't have a better way of getting an accurate plane for that direction. It gives us a place to work from to do the alignment of the miter slots and to check the table is at 90 degrees to the plane. BTW I do this with out the insert in place so the square sets on the table and against the plate.
For squareness I have my Woodpecker 1281. I trust this much more the an angle cube or angle gauge. See details here:
https://www.woodpeck.com/woodpeckers-pr ... x-261.html
At some point it is also advisable to check just how flat your main table is. We have seen some pretty wild anomalies posted here! If you are in the norm then you should have a pretty flat table. Just make sure you don't have dips or rises where you are adjusting for the 90 degrees. For flatness I have the woodpecker SERX-24, you can see that here:
https://www.woodpeck.com/serx-straight-edge-rule.html
You will also need some feeler gauges, I have several sets and I trust all of them so I like to use this one:
https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/to ... em=86K9901
To adjust the rip fence to the miter slot I have the woodpecker saw gauge. I have the first version shown here:
https://www.woodpeck.com/woodpeckers-saw-gauge.html
This is designed to take the width errors into account when placed in the miter slot. I have measured some larger then expected errors when I was try to do this alignment with the shopsmith gauge. Don't know if that was manufacturing tolerances or wear but having to shim the part that fits in the track was not going to win any accuracy.
Even after spending this much money and taking the time to get things about as perfect as I could it was very evident that had I actually gotten things to be .000" by using the tools at hand I still wouldn't really know how far off things were, cause each part has some variance. I do shoot for a zero tolerance between the miter slot and the master plate. Then since I use the rip fence to the left I try to have the far side slightly off, .005" maximum. Often you can get less then that.
Now comes the burn. Lean on the main table................
So about enough for now. Hope this gave you some things to think about.
Ed