[Jerry Bowen]

Might as well through my two cents worth in. Tom is absolutely correct about no need for a lift being accurate to a thousandth of an inch, it took me, as most of the members know, quite awhile to come to this realization.

A case of needing and wanting is another matter.

After being very disappointed with with two inexpensive routers in my router table I went to a Porter Cable 893. Part of the decision to go with the Porter Cable was the above the table adjustment feature that turned out to be of no value when the router was mounted beneath the table. This was, as I have pointed out beforer, due to the debris getting between the motor and the case that the motor slides up and down in. The debri would bind things up and no satisfactory adjustment could be made. So, then I was confronted with an issue that had only one good remedy, which was a good lift. I purchased the Incra Mast R lift which was the best decision that I could have made at the time. At least that was thinking.

I could have gone with the Triton instead of the PC but in that I didn't, well it was to late after buying PC.

Even though the very fine adjustments are not really of great value in most cases, due to my quirk of still thinking in terms of more precision than is needed the Incra lift was a good choice for me and I have never been sorry for it. The less powerful PC motor has done everything that I have asked of it with no strain at all.

The combination of the Mast R lift, the Wonder Fence and the Incra 17" LS system makes an extremely good set up. Do have to admit that the cost of all of this stuff may well be more that many people want to spend. What one buys depends on what one wants wants to do with their router and what one is willing spend for it, just like anything else in life I guess.

Smooth and accurate adjustment are done easily above the table with on slippage and no need to unlock from beneath the table.

By the way, in regard to what a thousandth of an inch is, as I recall,
one grain of talcomb powder is about .0001" in thickness. If that is true, and I may not be remembering right, then it should more than confirm the the fact that such accuracy in wood working is of no value.

Going back my obsession with benchrest shooting, there was a rule that if a shooter thinks that a target measurement is wrong, he or she could challenge the measurement, it costs a dollar to do so, or so was the rule when I was shooting 40 years ago. If the second measurement was within .020" of the original measurement the intial measurement stood. Many matches were won and/or lost by less than .020" by the way.

Jerry

 

[Jerry Bowen]

Let's see, $340 for the lift, $140 for a Bosch motor is $480. $or so for a Triton, that's just about $210 difference, not figuring the 1hp difference into the equation. You have to reach under to flip a lever to positively lock the Triton, but not the Master Lift. Precision is about the same, particularly if you're using jigs to set height, say, on a door set of bits. If you're living on a tight budget, that's a significant difference, but if you have income or make money from your tools, it's insignificant. Gets pretty subjective, doesn't it. Sometimes you just want what you want.

I think that your analogy is spot on, couldn't agree with it more. I wish that I had been more familiar with the Triton router early on. I'm sorry that I went the way I did but it sure would have been a good consideration.

Jerry

 

[Jerry Bowen]

Obiously from my previous posts, I am on the same page as Terry. The Incra Mast R lift along with the the Incra LS system is a great combination.

One thing I learned to do with the lift and the micro adjust feature is that of setting up and cutting miter lock joints.

I was never able to cut cross grain cut in a single pass so I did the following. The first step is to get the height of the bit correct. I have the gauges that some people use but because of vision problem they are hard for me to use and even when I used them the single pass on cross grain just didn't work for me. The material would chatter and buck so that a smooth cut was impssible.

In order to get the height of the bit correct I simple make a ball park practice cut and then using my dial calipers I can measure how far off center the cut is. I first mesure the thickness of the stock and divide by two to find where the center should be. Once I know that I use the calipers to determine where the center of the practice cut is. The center is where the male and female cuts meet. This measurement will tell how much the bit needs to raised or lowered in order to be correct and this adjustment is in thousandths. The accuracy of lift makes adjusting the final height of bit very simple and dead on.

Once that the bit is set the next step is to set the fence so that shallow cut are made. I make several of these shallow cut moving the fence just a little rearward after each cut until the final cut leaves a nice sharp edge at the top of the cut without reducing the width of the stock.

Next I zero the insert in the carriage that has the marks on it with the cursor so that I can, once again go to making my shallow cuts on the actual material being used in the project. I conting making the cuts and moving the fence rearward unto the cursor on the carriage is back to where the cursor on the carriage is on the previous zero mark.

This works for both the cuts with the material flat on the table as well as the ones with the stock flat against the fence for the opposing cut. The results have turned out to be perfect with no chattering during the cuts even with cross cutting in hard wood which was impossible for me earlier. The lift and micro adust used together makes this a simple endevor.

I will be the first to admit that the process could be accomplished without the llft and micro adjust but they do make the job so easy and fool proof, at least it works well for me and I like it. It took all of the frustration of using the miter lock bit for me.



Jerry