In article ,
Jim Elbrecht wrote:

Just as I was about to buy a tortilla press, my family gets on a 'wrap
sandwich' kick with those 10-12" wraps. Ii don't see presses that
big-- so I start looking into building one.

Pretty simple to start with-
http://www.curbly.com/chrisjob/posts...tortilla-press

But then I figure If I'm going to cut up either the oak or cherry 5/4
slab in the garage-- I might as well get the most use out of this
thing. So I want to make it adjustable. I'd like to be able to
adjust in 1/16" increments from 1/16 to say 1/2".

I know there has to be a more-or-less simple way to do this, but I'm
drawing a blank.

I've thought of using laminate shims to build up the base. Seems
like a dirt catcher, and kind of in-elegant.

I've been looking at adjustable cabinet hinges, but haven't found any
that adjust more than 5mm & I want at least 12.

Any other ideas? Even if it wasn't for a tortilla press, I'm sure
someone here has passed this way before.

Thanks,
Jim

I can think of several possibilities. One would be to make the spacing
fixed at 1/2", and then make some insert plates of various thicknesses.

Another would be to use a hinge assembly that uses a couple of 2-3" long
dowels that slip into bored holes in the top plate. Make the hinge
dowels offset from the center towards one side. Then each end of the top
plate can have two sets of holes bored off-center both horizontally and
wrt thickness. This would give you 4 different thicknesses just by
flipping the top board around.

You could make a two-piece top board with screw adjustable spacing
between the pieces, essentially adjusting its overall thickness.

Likewise you could mount one side of the hinge on a movable plate, again
readily adjusted with machine screws rather than sliding plates.

Although, the elongated hinge hole idea could work as well, and the
tedium of adjusting it accurately could be alleviated by putting a
thickness gauge into the device to keep the top and bottom plates
correctly spaced while you tighten the screws.