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Segment lengths

JFINE

PRO Member
Hi all,
Brand new to the software. I am getting calculated segment lengths like 1.053, 1.137 etc and was wondering if you round up, down, or do you have calipers that measure out to the 1000ths. If you round up or down what’s the rule of thumb? Do you add wall thickness to compensate or is that really not nessesary as the numbers are so small?

thanks in advance,
 
Hi JFine.
- I do not measure SEL to the 1000th. Rounding up works just fine.
- The software is giving you the SEL needed to create the circle based on the number of segments in the ring.
- Many turners will slightly overbuild. That is if you want a 6" ring , they would build a 6.125 to 6.25 inch ring and increase the board width to compensate. The ring would be turned down to the 6".

In your example of 1.053 SL could be just 1.0 and the 1.137 could be 1.1.
How accurate you want your SEL all depends on what your building and how critical the rings size is.


I generally use WTP. I create two cut list summary sheets. One for building with the fudge factor of 0.128 or 0.25. for each ring. The second sheet is snapped to profile. When I turn I can use outside calipers to turn down to the planned ring diameter.
Or if I am lazy I just eyeball the turning shape. Some of my turnings I don't care if the ring diameter is off a little as long as the shape looks fine.
 
Well the above was a help. Now I won't have to buy a ruler that has inches in hundreds.
That being said I would think Segment Pro would have an option to express everything in fractions.
 
Well the above was a help. Now I won't have to buy a ruler that has inches in hundreds.
That being said I would think Segment Pro would have an option to express everything in fractions.

If you want fractions Wood Turner Pro still supports fractions.

In another thread Lloyd stated why SP does not have fractions as an option:

"The S.E.L. (Segment Edge Length) is shown in decimal inches unless you have changed the setting to use milimeters.

Fractions are no longer used for a variety of reasons, first on the list is that desktop computers are being replaced with laptops and tablets and increasingly, keyboards are being deleted because touch screens and screen-based keyboards are becoming more prevalent. The fields used for data are all numeric fields because you can increment/decrement them by clicking on arrows. Fractions are text characters, though, so they cannot be used in a modern user interface.

Once you've used digital inches, you'll wonder why you didn't switch years ago. It is more accurate and far simpler. The key is to get a micrometer that measures in decimal inches and also get a ruler or tape measure that has fraction on one edge and digital inches on the other.

Finally, the rest of the world has been using digital numbers instead of fractions, well, forever. If we're ever going to get to a universal measurement system (should have happened years ago, moving to decimal inches from fractions if a major first step."
 
I take the XL spreadsheet from SP and calc the setup blocks (1/32, 1/16, etc.) to make up the SEL and use them to set the distance to the blade. It is a lot easier and faster than taking trial cuts and more accurate than a ruler. Why measure when you can calculate!
 
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