So… what’s with all those miter gauges??
Well about a week ago, I had the good fortune of acquiring an old Magna-Line standalone table saw. It was manufactured by Magna Power Tool Corporation, so I’d place it about 1957 vintage. Little by little, I’m picking through it and assessing condition before I plan the restoration.
Today I gave a closer look to the miter gauge, and at first glance it looks a lot like pretty much any Magna miter gauge of the period.
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Of course I noticed the lock knob more closely resembles the knobs that secure the plastic cover on early bandsaws, so I wanted to see what other unique features I might find. Clearly it was time for a group portrait!
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That’s a lot of green miter gauges - and believe it or not, they’re all different! But it turns out, that’s not a great angle to make the comparison, so let’s see the real defining feature…
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From left to right we have the Model 10ER Special Miter Gauge, the standard Mark 5 miter gauge, the Mark 2 miter gauge, and finally the Model 710 table saw miter gauge, and while they all used pretty much the same miter casting, you can see each has a distinctly different miter bar.
The 10ER version of course only fits the unique channel dimensions of its table. The Mark 2 is similarly unique for its table, but the bar is super short and also has no holes to accommodate the Universal Hold Down like the other 3 - there was just no room for extra cost in that design, and every hole represented cost…
The Mark 5 and the table saw bars were closest in design - the table saw bar being slightly thicker stock and missing the expansion nut hole and slot of the Mark 5 bar - which of course makes sense as there’d be no application on a table saw when a user would want to freeze the position of the miter!
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I mentioned before about getting cost out of the Mark 2 miter, and there were some other ways they did that.
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The Mark 2 version on the left has no angle stop features whatsoever! No ny-lock screws tapped into the casting, and not even the pin to set 90-degrees. Like I said, every hole, tap, and piece of hardware that could be removed was removed!