I have found it fastest and most accurate to keep everything in a long board until the final design has been made and then cut them into individual segments for cutting into angled segments to make a ring. So the process is this …
1. Follow all Lamination PRO instructions to build the final design shown in the Export Region. You will ALWAYS be making a chevron board and each board you make should be between 18” and 24” as this will make it easier to keep The aligment correct. Once the chevron board is don, make your long cuts as instructed and keep all of these strips in order, flipping when necessary for a SW design.
2. Make two rip cuts on the table saw to cutoff the ’ears’ leaving a long board(s) that has all of the segments with a board width that is the finished height of your feature ring.
3. Cut that board on your table saw or (better yet) on your miter saw. If you use a miter saw, make a sled made of two MDF boards about 18” long and 3-4” wide and glue them together to form an 18” ‘L’ that can be clamped to the fence. After clamping, make a sacrificial cut at 90 (or zero) degrees but make sure the blade depth is set so that the saw teeth cut no deeper than necessary to cut completely through the entire board.
4. To cut the segments, you cannot use a fence because if it is off by 1/32”, that error is increased by 1/32” with each additional cut. Now for the important part - each cut you make is going to make your segments ~1/8” shorter than you wanted and there are two ways to fi this. First, you can make your target SEL 1/8” more than the software specifies and we’ll get to the second option in a bit. To make your first cut on the long board, you need to cut 1/16 off each end of the board so that it will match what you do when you cut between the segments. After that first cut, move the board so that the joint between each segment is lined up in the center of the sacrificial cut you made first.
5. Take each of these segments and stand them up into their final orientation and if you put them all together, they should all be the identical height. If any are not, discard them.
6. Make the angled cuts. You can use either your wedgie sled or the miter sled you just used. A wedgie sled is a good choice in that you will get perfect angles whereas the miter saw will not be perfect. You’ll need to mount a clamp that clamps down on a segment to keep it place. Set a single stop and this stop will not be moved until all cuts have been made. Set the stop for a test and cut off the angle close but not so close that the angle cut cuts all the way though the board. Move the fence closer until you have 1/16” of a flat facet left. Flip the segment over, slide it against the stop and make the other angled cut. Now measure the face of that segment and it should be 1/8” shorter than you desired SEL. If you would have made the angled cuts to the front surface of the segment, the resulting ring would have been less than your desired outer dimension because of the saw kerfs that made the segments too narrow. Because you left the 1/16” facet, though, the SEL of the back edge of each segment is what it would have been if you started with a target that was increased by 1/8”.
I hope that helps.
Lloyd
