I have made my dado circular saw and am having problems with precision alignment. The first L- Square guide I made was about a degree off and I didn't notice until I made some dado cuts for shelving in a 2 board shelf with the dado in the end boards. Being persnickety as I am, I made a second set of wood L-Square guides. This time, I clamped my carpenters square onto my wood L-square guide and even checked squareness with my Woodpeckers 9 inch square. As best my eyes could tell, it was aligned perfect. At this point, I screwed the just glued L-Square together. Still in alignment as best I could tell.
But when I cut the 2 dados into two end boards to accept the shelving, they were off about 1/16 from each other on the outboard side. Not bad but not perfect. That means on dual 6 ft high end boards for shelving, there is no telling if I will have even more alignment issues or not.
What is the most precise? Machinist square or Engineers square? My understanding is that a Machinists square is generally more heavy duty simply because of its use. Not sure if that is true or not, or if it affects the precision.
I need at least 6 inches, prefer 9" but if I could find a 12" I would be happy. I would also like for it to be within .0005" square. At least 1/4" or 6mm thick. Steel, but Aluminum would do.
Might be expensive, but this would be a welcome addition to my tools if I could count on this being precise.
The L-Square below shows my purpose. The dado in the bottom of the L is my alignment guide; the left side is my guide. With this, all I have to do is set the alignment dado and clamp the left side alignment guide to the board and I clamped the right side to make sure it is/was square. I need to improve it by about 1/2 of a degree or maybe 1 degree. The back end of the cut was almost 1/16" off from the line marked. I am not sure where my error is occurring.
The marked line squares with my Starrett square from both sides; The L shows being square. but both boards, after being cut, show up as being off by the same amount. It was not enough to keep me from using them on the second set of end board cuts, but I didn't like the "not perfect".
I have considered that I am "drifting" or that the Dado in a circular saw is doing what the router mount in the BT3x00 does if not lock down - the vibration causes it to move.
I am trying to cover my bases to figure this out, and starting with a perfect square.
Ideas?
But when I cut the 2 dados into two end boards to accept the shelving, they were off about 1/16 from each other on the outboard side. Not bad but not perfect. That means on dual 6 ft high end boards for shelving, there is no telling if I will have even more alignment issues or not.
What is the most precise? Machinist square or Engineers square? My understanding is that a Machinists square is generally more heavy duty simply because of its use. Not sure if that is true or not, or if it affects the precision.
I need at least 6 inches, prefer 9" but if I could find a 12" I would be happy. I would also like for it to be within .0005" square. At least 1/4" or 6mm thick. Steel, but Aluminum would do.
Might be expensive, but this would be a welcome addition to my tools if I could count on this being precise.
The L-Square below shows my purpose. The dado in the bottom of the L is my alignment guide; the left side is my guide. With this, all I have to do is set the alignment dado and clamp the left side alignment guide to the board and I clamped the right side to make sure it is/was square. I need to improve it by about 1/2 of a degree or maybe 1 degree. The back end of the cut was almost 1/16" off from the line marked. I am not sure where my error is occurring.
The marked line squares with my Starrett square from both sides; The L shows being square. but both boards, after being cut, show up as being off by the same amount. It was not enough to keep me from using them on the second set of end board cuts, but I didn't like the "not perfect".
I have considered that I am "drifting" or that the Dado in a circular saw is doing what the router mount in the BT3x00 does if not lock down - the vibration causes it to move.
I am trying to cover my bases to figure this out, and starting with a perfect square.
Ideas?
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