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Warning: I was using my table saw fence all wrong for years
I was building a set of kitchen drawers last week and kept getting tiny gaps in my joints. I always just measured from the fence to the blade with a tape and thought that was good enough. Then my buddy Mike came over to borrow a router bit and saw me doing it. He said, 'Cole, you're trusting a flexible tape over a solid block? That's your problem.' He grabbed a scrap of 3/4 inch plywood, ran it through, and measured the cut piece. It was off by almost 1/16 of an inch! I felt so dumb. I immediately ordered a set of those machinist blocks to set the fence. My cuts are perfect now. Has anyone else found a better way to dial in their fence accuracy?
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schmidt.grace2mo ago
Man, that hits home. I did the exact same thing for ages, trusting a cheap tape measure. My miter gauge cuts were always a hair off and it drove me nuts. I finally bought a digital caliper and a set of feeler gauges to set the fence. The difference was insane, like night and day. It's crazy how such a simple fix makes everything square.
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