Digital angle boxes- are any better than others?

Theo- the plane blade setting was just an example. If I needed to drill a hole on my drill press at an angle one of those gauges could be handy to confirm the angle since the scale on the table isn't reliable in my opinion. Same goes for tilting a bandsaw or setting up something on my milling machine. I wasn't asking if you thought I really needed one but whether there is any real differences in quality.

The battery issue is a consideration but like Dan I tend to buy ones like that 10 at a time carded in blister packs. Way cheaper. My range hood uses a very small halogen and when one blew at about the one year mark I looked at buying a blister 2 pack and then got 20 of them for less money on ebay. Replaced the one and haven't needed another in the 3 or 4 years since. But I'm ready when it happens.

Anything like a Wixey or Tiltbox I'll probably have to order since the only options locally are probably the same as the Chinese knockoffs. I've looked at the specs among all of them for accuracy and they are all identical so I'm betting there is only one chip manufacturer that they all use.

JOAT said:

Always has to be someone different. I haven't sharpened a plane blade in I don't know how long. Because I have not been using planes in what I do just now. But were I to start sharpening them again, I would likely not buy anything. Instead, I would make a cutom blade honing jig for each plane, with the exact angle for that particular plane. Would take some time maybe to get one totally accurate, but after that it would be accurate, with no adjustment needed, just put the correct blade for that jig, and have at it. Then I'd use ScarySharp. It's just more fun, making stuff if you can, rather than buying.

I'd also write on the jig, what particular blade it is for, blade angle (in case I had to make another, later), and any other info I think I may need later.

Click to expand...

Here's one idea for a DIY honing guide, easy and cheap enough that you could make one for each blade. One downside to this particular idea is that the angle depends on the projection of the blade past the front of the jig - I've added a second article, actually showing making a jig for honing a skew chisel, that would be an improvement on this idea as setting the blade in the groove until the bevel touches the sandpaper and then clamping down would set the correct honing angle. The idea of gluing a piece of sandpaper to a block of MDF actually seems like a pretty good (and low cost) idea - cut the MDF, and the sandpaper in 3" strips to get the most economical use out of a sheet of sandpaper, and the cost is low enough that you could have a number of blocks set up with varying grades of paper.