I have a lovely New-To-Me used 4x8 Pro, and I am making my way towards dialing it in. I found that working my way down the cross beams with a 48" Stabila, testing level 3 beams at a time, … I encountered some teeter-totter exposing that a few of the beams are a touch higher or lower, causing level to wobble end to end.
Is this typical, and/or how have others dealt with small inconsistency in cross beam leveling?
Thanks in advance,
T
I had a slight issue when assembling mine so I used a piece of scrap steel I had in the shop (a 3/4" flat bar 4" wide and about 16" long) and clamped it to the top of the cross member and the side rail when tightening down the fasteners to ensure that they were precisely flush with each other. This eliminated any slight ups and downs. The only variable left was the side rail tolerance. Do your best to keep the gear rack as straight as possible, surfacing the spoil board will take care of any other slight variations.
If its a small (< 1/8") bow up or down, it will probably partially even out when you bolt on your spoilboard, and then the whole top will get flattened when you mill the top flat anyway.
Ok, thank you both. I was worried about trying to push them up and tightening, assuming it is possible that weight of lumber could push them down over time, vs everything just sitting down on their haunches against the lower side of the tracks. but maybe whole combined bolt of spoil board distributes enough that I don’t care. And .. deviations are < 1/8.
I went with the bar and clamp route when I was assembling. I also spent way too much time leveling during assembly. I don’t know if it is related but after it was assembled everything was as square as I could measure it except the y axis of the spindle. That was the only adjustment I had to make post assembly. Correlation does not imply causation, but after I put all that time in I’d like to think it had something to do with it.