Ed Bennet responds"

snip of agreement

As
a preference, I'd use a Freud flat disc, after checking the arbor and arbor
bearing for runout and, for the latter, flatness on its internal side.

Most people, though, are going to use the blade tips, I'll bet.

Yep, a lot of people do this. However, the sides of the teeth are
deliberately ground at an angle to prevent them from rubbing the
inside of the kerf. So, it is very difficult to obtain reliable
measurements from their surfaces.

The flat blade replacement plate works fine so long as it is really
flat. I have yet to find one commercially that is. I made one up
special for the Wood Magazine review because they were planning to use
a well advertised but particularly poor quality item for their
testing. I surface ground mine from solid 3/4" thick hot rolled low
carbon steel (A36). My goal was to guarantee 0.001" accuracy over
it's 10" width. Not exactly an easy task. And, to top it all off,
it's completely unnecessary.

The best practice is to mark a spot on the blade body. Take all your
measurements with the dial indicator stylus on that spot. Rotate the
blade as necessary to move the spot from front to rear. This spot
will always travel in a circle within the plane of the blade,
absolutely perpendicular to its rotational axis (arbor). This
technique is guaranteed to work better than any blade replacement
plate you can buy. Better than any I can make in my shop (which is
why I can't justify offering any for sale).


Yeah, I was gonna say I'd like one like the one you did for Wood, but I don't
have the resources of Meredith behind me, so...

Anyway, I agree with your next paragraph, and will steal it for my own use if
you don't mind.


Charlie Self
"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never
learned to walk forward." Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio address, Oct. 26, 1939