I have been fortunate enough to be chosen as a beta tester for Steve Adams' Qwas dogs. So I thought I'd start a thread showing a few things that these amazing little puppies can do. Steve has already posted some videos in another thread. I'm not so technically advanced as Steve - I'll be posting pictures.
The Qwas dogs are amazing tools. Steve has turned them so that they have a shiny surface - they make a satisfying "clink" when you jingle them together. I have 3 MFT 1080 table tops, and it turns out they all have different hole sizes. So I'm the perfect
victim beta tester - some dogs fit in some holes, but not others. We did arrive at a dog diameter that would fit in all the holes snugly enough that there was negligible play.
I would suggest purchasing two sets of Qwas dogs (4 all together). You can do amazing things with these. I have now completely stopped using the factory-installed stops for the 1080 guide rail, and use the Qwas dogs for aligning the rails, stock, table tops, etc.
Here's one of the first things I did with the dogs:
Aligning two MFT1080 table tops
I have two MFT1080's aligned end-to-end. I find that this works really well for cutting long stock - both rips and cross-cuts. Unfortunately I don't have a guide rail that is the length of the two tables. So I join a 1400 and a 1080 together. Turns out - even with two joining rods - the rails are very difficult to align. On long rips I've found that it's fairly easy to be off by 1/8" by the end of the cut.
So how do you ensure that the rails are aligned for making long rips? The first step is aligning the holes in the two table tops.
First I put 4 Qwas dogs in the table tops - 2 in each table - in the same row of holes:
Here I've butted the back edge of the 1400 guide rail up against two dogs on the farthest table. If you look closely, you can see that there's about 1/16" clearance of the rail on the nearest dog. Here's a pic where I inserted a folded piece of paper in the gap:
This indicates that the two tables are out of alignment. So I loosened the screws on the nearest table top, and nudged it until the Qwas dogs just touched the back of the guide rail:
If the table is loose enough, you can actually overshoot the table adjustment, and then use the guide rail to push the table top into perfect alignment.
Here's what it looks like with all 4 Qwas dogs aligned with the back of the rail:
I now have two table tops with holes forming perfectly straight lines.
Aligning two joined guide rails
I've found that it's very tricky to get two long guide rails joined in a perfectly straight line. Tiny movements at the joint translate into big errors a meter or two away. I know - I could drop a few hundred bucks and buy a long rail, but I don't use it that much, and these things are supposed to work - right?
Now that my table tops are aligned, I just move the joint between the two guide rails so that it's positioned between two pairs of Qwas dogs. Then I loosen the screws holding the rail connectors in, push the guide rails so that they're both touching the Qwas dogs, and tighten the screws. You still have to be careful when handling the rails that you don't put them out of alignment. But if you do, it's trivial to re-align them with the Qwas dogs. I do it before every cut.
I tell - these things are
great!
I'll be posting more uses as I develop them. Please join in!