Gentlemen,
Back to the original subject, trying to talk about setups and measurements to the thousandths. It's easy to mock this kind of thing, but to do that you have to ignore the real point. We'll call it the "Doofus Factor."
I'm the perfect example. You all know by now what a complete doofus I am. I started with building garden structures with a skill saw. I was lucky if I even got close to a mismarked line holding a 2x4 in one hand and the skil saw in the other. Then I got a direct drive benchtop, and got closer. It cost me $40, remaindered, with parts missing, at the despot. Durned near killed myself with that thing, too. When we moved into this house, I splurged, shockingly and incredibly: I bought a ridgid contractor saw. I spent a fortune on that thing, like, $450. I got a lot closer, but I was building different stuff, and it looked as wrong as the garden structures did... only now, I couldn't plant vines to cover how out of square things were. The naked truth I had to face was that I was a complete doofus.
But wait! Maybe not. Maybe there's hope for me! MAYBE ITS THE TOOLS! Yeah, that's the ticket! Ever spent an entire day trying to get a contractor saw arbor and blade close to true to a miter gauge slot? I have... and only got it to within 10/1000. Whoops, one one hundreth. At least I wasn't burning every piece of maple anymore. Or even every piece of sycamore. But things still weren't coming out right... And you should have seen how badly things were going on the router table. So I did the unthinkable, driven to desparation by Doorlink's mockery: I spent almost as much on a decent fence as I had on the tablesaw. I thought my suffering had ended...
Got it all set up. Took a board, set the fence to 2", and cut. Whoops, better adjust, try again. Whoops... on and on like that, most of the afternoon. I thought I might be able to get a board that measured 2" in width, all the way along its length. But alas!
As I type, I'm sitting in the kitchen. The laptop's sitting on the big central island I made, the one Doorlink always wanted. Less than six inches from my left wrist is the place where a router misalingment ate into the formica, cutting through the blue surface material and revealing the dark backing underneath. It's the first thing you see when you walk into the kitchen. To my left is a large picture frame with a visible gap in the top left. To my right, a large refrigerator cabinet, with a face frame, one component of which is perfect in three corners, and visibly off in the fourth.
Given all that, I would be THRILLED if I got anything close to even 5 1/1000s. I would crow about it, and reveal myself as the doofus everyone knows I am! It was only after spending an entire day on each major tool, trying to get each one as dialed in as I could, that I realized the problem wasn't cast iron implements, or steel straight edges, but pure and simple karma. In a previous life, I must have carelessly mocked some poor rushed underpaid woodworker's joinery, and now the universe is giving me my just desserts! I think the only solution is to hang up as many images of the goddess in my shop that I can, and pray to her often, not for better setups, but for forgiveness! How long, o lord, how long must I do penance for that unremembered careless joke sometime in the distant past? Sadly, no answer is forthcoming...
Thanks,
Bill