[Cherryville Chuck]

Very interesting Dan, it reinforces what I have said on this forum many times when members talk about attempting to get to 0.001" in wood!! Such members seem to forget that, unlike metal, it moves with the weather, even if 0.0005" is achieved on the day, tomorrow the sun may not be shining and it's raining, how accurate is it then?

And then there are the tolerances when two parts have to fit together or only look the same. I see posts where someone thinks that two parts have to be alike and spend a lot of time and effort doing that when they really only have to look alike and it takes very little time or effort to do that.

Getting back on track, Pat Warner once said what he thought was the maximum allowance in shaft size. Does anyone remember what it was? I'm sure it was less that 2 thou but it seems to me that it wasn't much under that.

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

Does it say what the tolerance is for a collet fit? It doesn't want to let me in because of my ad blocker.

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

Well made dowels are supposed to be like biscuits. They get compressed and are designed to swell up when you glue them.

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

I heard decades ago that (NASA?) had developed polishing techniques that could polish fine enough that two metal surfaces would weld themselves together when they came into contact with each other. They were looking at using the technology in outer space where regular welding would be impossible.

Herb I used to use a lot of the Ramin dowels too. They aren't all that accurate so maybe the bits were good and the dowels weren't. I've cut grooves along the sides before when I was worried about too much hydraulic pressure.