OK,Deckel fans, here's what happened...
So I'm doing some inside work on the house which involves extending an existing railing by about 15 feet (5m). I needed to set 10mm dowels in the centerline of the top rail, every 16cm, spaced 24.7mm apart. So I threw together a jig to locate the holes, a piece of 22mm plywood with the holes correctly spaced, two parallels screwed on to locate the jig on the rail, and started drilling. But for some reason, the torque of the drill, the phase of the moon, whatever, the holes were slightly cocked, about +- 0.5mm off the centerline. That's bad: it rotates the rails in a way that's immediately visible. Of course I only noticed this after the first five pairs of holes, which meant gluing in dowels, chopping them off, and redrilling. :cryin:
The problem was my crappy jig, so I start gathering the pieces for a good jig. Metal-based this time: some 8x10cm angle aluminium that I can clamp to the side, a thick backer piece so that the drill is guided. Anyway, I'm bandsawing off a piece of the angle when it suddenly strikes me, I don't need a jig, the mill provides everything needed to locate, clamp, etc. So two minutes later I've got another piece of angle iron clamped to the table to locate the rail parallel to X, I've got the vertical head centered in the middle of the rail. Clamp rail, jog X to under the 16cm pencil mark, zero DRO X, spin X to -12.35, drill, spin X to +12.35, drill, release clamp, slide rail 16cm, repeat. It takes less time to finish the rail than it would have taken to build a jig.
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This is terrible, right? Using a Deckel mill to cut wood, it's like using a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store. I'm ashamed. But this time those holes were not cocked more than a few microns, the spacing was woodworking-perfect, and everything fit and lined up like it should.
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Somehow I know this is wrong, but really, it was the easiest and best way at hand. Has anyone else here been in the same boat?
Cheers,
Bruce
So I'm doing some inside work on the house which involves extending an existing railing by about 15 feet (5m). I needed to set 10mm dowels in the centerline of the top rail, every 16cm, spaced 24.7mm apart. So I threw together a jig to locate the holes, a piece of 22mm plywood with the holes correctly spaced, two parallels screwed on to locate the jig on the rail, and started drilling. But for some reason, the torque of the drill, the phase of the moon, whatever, the holes were slightly cocked, about +- 0.5mm off the centerline. That's bad: it rotates the rails in a way that's immediately visible. Of course I only noticed this after the first five pairs of holes, which meant gluing in dowels, chopping them off, and redrilling. :cryin:
The problem was my crappy jig, so I start gathering the pieces for a good jig. Metal-based this time: some 8x10cm angle aluminium that I can clamp to the side, a thick backer piece so that the drill is guided. Anyway, I'm bandsawing off a piece of the angle when it suddenly strikes me, I don't need a jig, the mill provides everything needed to locate, clamp, etc. So two minutes later I've got another piece of angle iron clamped to the table to locate the rail parallel to X, I've got the vertical head centered in the middle of the rail. Clamp rail, jog X to under the 16cm pencil mark, zero DRO X, spin X to -12.35, drill, spin X to +12.35, drill, release clamp, slide rail 16cm, repeat. It takes less time to finish the rail than it would have taken to build a jig.
This is terrible, right? Using a Deckel mill to cut wood, it's like using a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store. I'm ashamed. But this time those holes were not cocked more than a few microns, the spacing was woodworking-perfect, and everything fit and lined up like it should.
Somehow I know this is wrong, but really, it was the easiest and best way at hand. Has anyone else here been in the same boat?
Cheers,
Bruce