Qualified Success

OK, so you should be able to work out what this is if you've read my recent blogs. Yes, it's to do with the on-going saga of cutting mitres for the school's pinboards! A decent electric mitre saw (like the one I have gathering dust in the UK) would make mincemeat of this job. Here in India I don't want to spend out on a saw which will cost around £100 and will probably never be used again. And if I donate it to SISP it will probably last ten seconds before some cackhanded youth either cuts his fingers off or launches the workpiece into somebody's face. Or an alternative interpretation is that I'm just plain too mean!

I asked about hiring a mitre saw but that doesn't seem to be a possibility here. No doubt I could get the joints cut at a fabrication workshop but there isn't one nearby. And anyway, where's the challenge and the sense of achievement in that?!

So, here is Clive's Mitre Block Mk II. Total cost, including saw, £1.60, or 2 Euro-ish. Mk I, made from angle iron with slots wonkily cut in it, has been consigned to the bin. Well, to the shelf, actually - no one throws anything away here, other than plastic. Quite right too!

And Mk II is a qualified success!! Today, I spent five hours solid correcting my first attempted frame and making a second new one. The end result is good enough for somewhere not too important - like the general noticeboards on the school's staircase where they'll get abused anyway. The problem is with the accuracy of the cut. The mitre block cuts nice and vertical but the angle isn't quite right and the resulting frame corners are a bit too open. My mate Mr Gowers assures me that the 45 degrees you get from folding a piece of paper is accurate to less than a degree - but he was forgetting who was doing the folding! I'm cautiously optimistic that I can do better with a bit of fiddling.