Mystery Miter Gauge
Cleaned up this Miter Gauge I recently acquired. It was understandably a bit grimy when I got it, paint is a bit rough, and the miter grip accessory needed a few parts (which I had) - but it cleaned up well. And besides the unusual miter bar (
anyone spy the missing feature??), it looks like a normal Mark 5 miter gauge.
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Well, I showed quite a few other miter gauges in my collection on a post to this thread recently, so why’d I even pick up this one, you might ask…?
It relates to a post on Facebook where group members were arguing about the origin of a 5-in-1 machine that resembles a Mark 2, but with “Powr-Kraft” on the nameplate. I knew that it was in fact a Magna/Yuba manufactured machine, and pointed out to the group that by the late 1950s, Magna was actually providing most of the standing power tools for the Montgomery Ward Powr-Kraft brand - including most of those featured on the cover of their 1958 catalog:
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In some cases, cosmetic modifications were made to equivalent Magna-Line tools (like the table saw), while in other cases, the tool is exactly the same, just with a Powr-Kraft nameplate replacing the Magna nameplate (lathe, jointer, etc.).
While I was scanning some of the details of the catalog for my own reference, I was looking over the details of the Montgomery Ward equivalent of the Magna-Line table saw, and noticed some interesting detail…
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It’s hard to see, but it looked like the cosmetic changes went beyond the main system and included a Powr-Kraft branded miter gauge!
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If these things actually existed, I wanted to see one! And it didn’t take long for one to pop up on eBay, and now it’s in the collection…
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Yup, it’s a legit miter gauge for a Powr-Kraft table saw, manufactured by Magna! It has the same beefier miter bar dimensions of a similar miter gauge on my Magna-Line table saw, and is similarly missing the spreader slot of the Mark 5 miter (see first picture).
As a final note, I always find it interesting to see what sort of things might have changed when modifications of this sort were created to familiar Shopsmith accessories. This one is a bit of a head-scratcher…
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They actually removed some material from the casting that would have accommodated the nylon standoffs that prevent scratching the table surface. That’s some serious penny-pinching!
