On 2007-07-03 08:27:43 +0100, "dennis@home"
said:


"Andy Hall" wrote in message
...

So I think that it's perfectly possible, even for somebody on limited
means, to look beyond what others would seek to apply as limitations and
to make up their own minds. It's also entirely reasonable to say that if
one buys product X it will produce result A, but with product X+50% the
outcome is twice as good as result A. Some people might like to choose 2A
at a cost of X+50%. At least the opportunity will have been pointed out.

There is nothing you can't do with cheap hand held power tools that you can
do with expensive ones of similar type.

That depends on the finish, degree of accuracy you want, the amount of
time you are willing to take and the amount of frustration you are
willing to tolerate.

There are cases of impossibility such as with the jig saw.

There are many cases of repeatability where the equipment has to be
rechecked after each cut to avoid substantial errors. There are some
where the lack of sturdiness of the machine prevents an accurate result
being achieved with any degree of certainty. Sliding compound mitre
saws are an example of this.





Last week I was making doors and windows using a £5 circular saw (argos:
challenge IIRC) and a £6 drill (sainsburys: draper) and they were not a
problem (saw is a bit noisy but the vac is even louder).
You just work differently like using a cutting jig on the saw and not the
rip fence (you would use the jig anyway as it is far better than any rip
fence and easier to use).

I agree with you that the use of jigs is helpful, but then you have to
spend time making them. I do that for cases where a jig will be used
a lot ( your circular saw one would be a good example) or for cases
where I can't think of a better or alternative approach.

Actually for a circular saw I would never use the rip fence anyway -
there are too few cases where they are useful. The better solution is
to use a guide rail. I occasionally do that if cutting a very large
sheet, but then cut it over size and do the precision cuts on the table
saw.

One example of that was where I was making a ramp for a wheelchair.
This was using decking boards and there had to be a smooth transition
from the lower level onto the ramp. To do this involved thicknessing
the first board at an angle and so I made a jig designed to hold the
board but raising one side. The whole lot would then pass through the
thicknesser. This worked very well and I suppose took me about 30
mins to make the jig. Realistically, it's a one use jig, or maybe
again if I need to replace/repair the ramp.

I don't mind spending time making jigs to do very specific things, but
not a whole load of them just to do the basics that can be achieved by
using more sturdy equipment.

I also don't mind doing the setups. For example, setting up the
spindle moulder or dado cutter, doing test cuts, measuring with digital
caliper, adding shims to the tooling and repeat can be time consuming.
However, once done, they remain solid until the next set of cuts is
done. It would be incredibly frustrating if the whole exercise had
to be repeated for each cut because the tooling moved around.