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compound mitered segment help

john lucas

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short history. when I first started turning everything I did was segmented or laminated. Didn't know there was any other way until I saw David Ellsworth in Fine Woodworking way back in the early 80's. Anyway I did all sorts of segments from laminated rings to staves to compound mitered staves. Got layed off several times took massive pay cuts and finally got the job as a photographer for Tenn. Tech University. I was really broke and could not buy decent wood. I was lucky enough to meet Joe Looper who got me interested in turning green wood. I still had a shopsmith at the time so any time I found dry wood, be it an old crate or pallette or whatever I cut it up and glued it together. Could not sell segmented work for even the price of the wood around here but fortunately found making hand mirrors fun. OK that was a long story but now I'm getting back into segmented somewhat and having fun making Beads of courage boxes. I like making the compound miter staves so here is my question. I purchased a Makita 10 compound miter saw several years ago after researching what was really accurate and it seems to do a great job. I'm now making 16 segment rings and just can't nail it perfectly. The last ring I just did was the closest yet and after gluing 2 half rings together there is still a gap on both sides. Not a lot and easily sanded out on the disc sander. My question is 2 fold. first. What do you use to set the angles. I have a wixey angle gauge that I use for the blade and a Wixey adjustable angle protractor to set the table. I'm using a book I got from Bridge City tools to show me the exact angles to 3 digits but of course the Wixey only goes to tenths. then I have the issue of trying to achieve those angles to a tenth. Ideally the saw needs a micro adjustment of the blade tilt and swing but it doesn't have it. Here is the other question. When it's off how do you or can you determine of it's the blade tilt or the table swing. I think I can actually rig up a micro adjustment for the table using a Vernier kind of scale along with the existing scale. The blade tilt however is really course. Loosen the locking know just a hair too much and it's too loose. Too tight and it doesn't want to move so it's really hard to move it a tenth of a degree. I haven't sat down to think about it very hard but is there a way to cut on both sides of the blade so you get the advantages of the seg-easy. Anyway I'm waiting for the glue to dry and have too much time on my hands so I thought I would throw this out there.
 
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I will let the really smart turners, i.e. segmenters, answer your questions, but I will just throw out this. Wixey makes a wide variety of digital electronic angle measuring devices, but these vary in their accuracy. While most all of them will report an angle to a precission of 0.1* many of their units are actually only accurate to +/- 0.3* which may not be enough for the work you're doing. And it could be worse than that, I have a Wixey protractor with plastic blades that is off by 0.7* when compared to my Woodpeckers square. I also now have a Wixey protractor with aluminum blades that has a stated accuracy of 0.1* and indeed is off by 0.1* compared to the square. So don't necessarily believe every digital readout, and maybe see how your Wixey's stack up to a known square or 45.
 
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My suggestion would be to keep tweaking the saw until you get a perfect wedge and then don’t touch it other than to adjust for the different diameter lengths. This is what I did when I was using a chop saw.

You may be able to keep tweaking the saw until you get a perfect cut, You don’t have to make 16 to test, start with 4 and make a perfect 90, correct the error, toss the 4 and cut 4 new ones. When the 4 seem to make a perfect 90, then cut 8 to get half ring. Repeat until perfect. Then take a wide board and cut that angle, this is you pattern to reset the saw each time it gets used doing other operations with the saw. Use this wide board to set saw for all future settings. If you cut rings with different ring count/angles you would need to make multiple wide boards.
Here is a picture of a dry fit using all the pattern wedges that I have made.

AllWedges1.jpg
 

john lucas

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would be nice if I could leave the saw alone but I use it often to cut long boards to length and when doing house construction projects. I will look at making a wide board angle gauge. Mark I bought one of the plastic Wixey from Woodcraft and I don't like it. It needs to have a lock to stay in position. It does seem accurate however. I purchased a really cheap metal copy of the wixey at the flea mkt. It was accurate and locked in position but the LED readout died. Still it was worth the $3 I paid for it. I bought my wixey box like angle gauge so long ago they may have newer better models. It does seem to be pretty accurate.
 
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John, Are you trying to cut Staves? What do you mean by compound miters?? The problem about setting a saw up and never moving it is as you said, your saw cannot be used for anything else.
 
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DSCF1625.JPG

Gadgets laying around the shop. Iphone with the "Rotating Sphere Clinometer" app installed. It's free on the iphone app store. My friend made a wood case that he puts the phone in. The wood case has a couple of magnets which attach to the blade and reports it to be more accurate than the Wixey. My limited tests confirm.

The General miter gauge is also quite accurate so long as you hit the zero button before using.

The steel wedges are machinists gauges and come in a set of 10 or so. Not that expensive but not that useful.

Moving along we come to the world of higher precision. I have a rotary table for my Bridgeport. It can divide each degree into 60 minutes, than divide each minute into 5 second increments. I sometimes cut setup gauges for projects. I've made wedgies for stuff like 13 segments.

I also made a miter gauge for my Hammond printers saw which features a vernier scale accurate to .1 degree (actually better). This is the only thing I use for segments as its far faster and more accurate than the sled. Unfortunately the blade does not tilt for compound.

DSCF9302.JPG

DSCF9307.JPG

Maybe something will spark an idea.
 
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I cut my compound staves on a table saw with miter sled i built. Its an incra miter gauge inset into a piece of 3/4 mdf. It has a sacrificial board on the miter gauge with a t track on top for a stop block and I put a t track close to the blade edge for a hold down. If you have a table saw that would be a better option.
 
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Not a segmenter, but some thoughts. As mentioned, table saw is more accurate if you have one. You can cut on both sides of the miter saw, just need to make sure you have a good hold down for both sides.

Accurate tilt adjustment- I'm thinking of some sort of jig attached to the saw. No idea what it might look like, but I'd start by using some all thread and a couple of nuts for adjustment. Would need to be able to rotate at both the point of attachment and at adjustment point, but i think it could be done with a little fiddling. If possible, probably want to attach to the body of the saw and the fence. Wouldn't bother trying to attach anything to the existing tilt mechanism, it's too wimpy, has too much flex as it is so far from the center of gravity of the saw.
 
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The saw shown is a Makita 10" and the setup on it is used to make the 15 staves for my version of the Mary Rose tankard. The picture showing the digital compass is the end result of the trial and error of setting the 12 degree angle and a similar function would be used to set the 1 degree taper. The stave blanks are cut to 3/8" thick X 1.125" wide X 6" long. The cutting jig is mounted onto the saw after the 2 angles are set. The blanks are held in place using a combination of end pressure from a destaco clamp for the initial cut a fence with overhang ( not visible on the left side of the blade) square to the table and the second cut has a fence on the right with both angles such that the first cut will seat into the fence. Note the block of wood laying in the slide rails to prevent the blade form hitting the Destaco clamp and the saw's built in depth stop is used to prevent the saw from cutting through the jig. The wood at the back of the jig where the blank is clamped against is backed up by a hidden 3/8" slice off the end of a 2" X 2" X 1/4" angle iron The staves made with this jig will assemble into good clean joints with only the difference in grain to show where the joints are.
 

john lucas

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We are getting there. What I'm calling a compound miter may be the wrong term. This is a stave that is tapered from top to bottom so you have a miter that is tilted and angled. My problem with the table saw is it's perfect for cutting one side but to cut the other side you have to flip the piece which leads to inaccuracies. I may have to see if I can to this on my seg-easy. I'm not sure what angles I would use on the seg easy itself. All of the charts I find are for tilting the blade and miter gauge but you would need a complimentary angle for the second fence of the segeasy. Still it might work. I may have time today to try on some scrap and see. I tried cutting scrap blocks for the miter saw once I got it perfect but the next time I used them my cuts weren't accurate. Not sure what happened there. My cuts are close enough to glue up half rings and then true up the 180 with minimum loss of wood but I sure would like to figure out how to do it without that.
Larry I am a struggling machinist and have some accurate tools. I suppose I could try and rig up the sine bar in such a way to measure blade tilt and fence tilt. I did that when I made the triangles for my seg-easy and they are accurate. I'm not sure it would work on the saw because there may not be enough clearance. I may ask my friend who just bought a CNC router to make me some custom triangles to use for setting the saw and fence.
 
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This is a stave that is tapered from top to bottom so you have a miter that is tilted and angled.
I believe you are talking about COOPERED open top vessels such as buckets or tankards. The previous post on this thread is detailing the cutting of staves for a coopered tankard. The math for the miter is simple as in ( 360 / 15 = 24 / 2 =12 degree. The taper of 1 degree I determined by drawing the form using AutoCad then then extracting a stave and measuring the taper angle, which came close to 1 degree. The the next step was to redraw the assembly with a 1 degree taper.
101_0960.JPG
 

john lucas

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this is what I'm calling a compound miter. It's mostly because I have to use my compound miter saw to cut them until I find a better way. What I do now is cut one side, flip the wood and push it against the stop and cut the other side. I may be wrong but cutting them this way doubles the error. These pieces are 8" long and taper from about 1 3/4" down to 1" but that's a guess because I didn't measure this piece. I don't see a way to do these on a seg-easy but I only spend a few minutes looking at my seg-easy and my brain may not be working. I will look up Malcom book I have it.
 

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Use your wedgie sled for the one side then cut a second block that you first put in wedgie sled And then you rotate block you just cut to cut second side. You will end up with a compound stave if second block makes up the proper angle you need for second side.
 
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I would suspect if you used anything like a wedge sled on a table saw it would be like a Dubby sled, has a sled on both sides of the blade so it could have the blade tilted for one side of the stave and switch to the other sled for the next cut leaving the blade angle untouched. You would be cutting from a stick as wide as the stave is long so it would be a bit interesting to set up. I would suppose each end stop would be mounted on the opposing sled.
Ruminations of a demented scientist, does it make sense?
I saw the Dubby sled here
View: https://youtu.be/4XNh0v2GUJA
 
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brian horais

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There is an excellent article in the April 2016 issue of American Woodturner on 'Turning a Tapered Stave Bowl'. The author, Bill Wells, provides a detailed discussion of designing the staves, selecting angles, making a cutting sled for your table saw, and creating the gluing clamps you will need to put it all together. I used the article to make a staved vase with some added dovetail details and was very happy with how the staves 'turned' out.

P.S. The dovetail sections were in the flat section of each stave. I'm not creative enough to make tapered, multi-angle dovetails...
 

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john lucas

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Thanks Brian. I just read the article again (I'm sure I read it years ago). He flips the board between each cut which is what I was hoping to stay away from. In Malcolms book He starts with a rectangle and cuts one side with one jig or set up. then puts it in another jig and cuts the other. I could see where this would be very accurate once you fine tune your jigs. I scanned back through Beyond Basic turning by Jack Cox which is a very hard to read book but has an incredible amount of information. He fine tunes the angles using a jig on the disc sander which I have done for regular segments using Malcolm's suggestions. I also looked back through my book Laminated Designs in Wood by Clarence Rannefeld. He has table saw jig that can be adjusted with some pretty fancy adjustable angle gauges and hold down blocks. It works. I made one many years ago but it got re used for something else a while back. If I do much of this I may build a copy of his sled. It is incredibly useful if you do the multiple generation style of building laminated rings and segments. The problem with all of these is it assumes you will be making multiples of this compound angle. If you want just a few degrees more tilt on the sides or change the number of sides it throws everything out the window. OH well. I'm having fun playing but not sure how much of this I will do. You can't sell segmented work around here to get back the price of the glue you used in the project so anything I do is purely for my pleasure.
 
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could u comment on the tapered finale both inside/outside
 

john lucas

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Well I just turn an upside down cone. then I hollowed it to depth in steps using about 5 different twist drills. then I hollowed it and cleaned it up with a 1/4" spindle gouge. Then tapered the top on the disc sander and used one of the small rotary chisels cutters in my Dremel to carve out the V.
 
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Tks...makes sense....i have not seen a finale like that.....sorta BLUE V
 
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John - a number of years ago I designed a turned bird house with a compound staved roof made up of 8 staves. Over about three iterations when I finally made table jigs with clamps for my SCMS that precisely held the blank, I was able to consistently come up with precise fitted roofs. The pdf of this is no longer on our guild site or others where it was. Here are a couple of screen prints from it that describe the cuts.


Cpd Stave_1 (Small).jpg Cpd Stave_2 (Small).jpg
 
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