MasterGageMP-1 MasterPlate

After reading some of the comments below, I was a little reluctant to order. -But I'm glad I did. The plate arrived well packaged, so no obvious shipping damage. I measured the plate for flatness using a steel straight edge and feeler gauges. Couldn't get my thinnest gauge (0.0015") to slip under anywhere. After putting in my Sawstop, I found table to blade was out of parallel by over 8 thou. Realignment was easy, and this plate made allowed me to check parallelism over the 8-10” of the plate’s surface. After alignment, I flipped the plate so I could check the opposite side just in case there was some error in the plate. Well all I can tell you is that if there is, it is less than 0.0005”, but that could be either my miter slot or the plate.

The mantra for working around a table saw is or should be: It's a table saw. Do you know where your fingers are? It cannot be overstressed that the initial set up of a table saw is critical to being able to use that saw safely. Towards that end, MasterGage makes an extremely flate plate that bolts to the arbor, which in combination with their "MasterGage" dial indicator, allows you to align said arbor (and therefore, the blade) with the table, miter gauge slot and fence to within .001-.002". The two products purchased together will cost you a hundred bucks, which, for me, is a chunk of change. However, since bringing my saw into alignment, gone are the occasions of binding blades and large chunks of wood flying around the inside of the shop. Well worth the expenditure.

I was always a little skeptical of table saw set up measurements using the saw blade as a reference point. When I saw this product and read the reviews I thought it would make a more accurate alternative. It was a "no brainer" to spend $50 to ensure that my $3,500 saw and $150 blade were working in harmony to give me the accuracy I wanted. Using the MasterPlate was much easier to use than the saw blade method, and provided greater assurance of a reliable result.P.S. - The seller also included a great inches/decimal/millimeter conversion chart that immediately went up on my wall!

Certainly don't depend on the MasterPlate for setting up your saw. I measured a .008" warp across the plate. To quote another reviewer, it is 'unflat'.Putting this into perspective, Sawstop says to unbolt and realign the tabletop whenever the arbor is more than .003" out of adjustment. .008" misalignment will cause burned wood and poor fit.I have added two of the pictures that I took of the MasterPlate 'unflat'-ness just after opening the package. The factory box was perfect, unblemished and undamaged; the Amazon box that the plate arrived in was undamaged; this problem wasn't a shipping issue. MasterPlate have stopped drilling the 1" hole and they also stopped anodizing the plate; the surface is now just plain rough milling. O1 Tool Steel Sheet, Precision Ground, Annealed Temper, Standard Tolerance, Inch  is my next reference plate.UPDATE: BOO! FOUL!Someone removed the photos showing exactly how 'un-flat' the April 2013 Masterplate is. I considered those as part of my review. I can post videos but not photos??? They were damning photos...The photos showed two different _reference_ straight edges (Starrett 387-36 and Woodpecker SERX-36) placed diagonally across a new Masterplate. Under one edge was a .008" feeler gauge showing the Masterplate was not flat as specified in the literature. This is the proper way to quantify 'flatness'.The photos also showed that the Masterplate no longer has an anodized surface, it has just a rough ground finish.The photos also showed that the Masterplate no longer has support for a 1" arbor (my Makita miter saw has a 1" arbor and was one reason for me originally wanting a reference tool with the original specifications).My original review also had an active html link showing the solution I have now gone with. Since someone has removed the link you will have to look it up yourself. 'Starrett 56985', it was 65 bucks, just look around... Its an inexpensive 18" x 6" precision ground plate (+/-.001" thickness tolerance) that you will have to carefully use a hack saw to cut to length and then carefully use a drill (hand or press) to punch a 5/8" and 1" hole(s).BTW: I did return it the next day.

I purchased this to do a precision alignment on my 1990's Delta Unisaw. It does exactly what it advertises and is a lot easier to work with than a 10" saw blade since it is much more rigid and it was made for the express purpose of being straight.This thing is not perfectly straight though. It has some slight curvature to it, and the center is about 0.003" concave from the edges over its 10" length (on one side, it's convex on the other, measured with my dial indicator). It's no big deal, and probably within the advertised "ground flat to within thousandths of an Inch". I am sure that the parallelism of the two sides is ground very precisely, but the flatness is not perfect.Anyway, considering that my saw was out by 0.021" over 10" before the adjustment, and it is now 0.001" or better over 10" (assuming that this plate is straight at the edges), I am perfectly happy with it. This works very well with a dial indicator mounted on a 3/4" bar in a miter slot, and is a lot faster than doing it with a square and shop light to sight the gap.

The black anodized finish shown in the advertisement that I responded to is no longer supplied. The maker passes off the current, aluminum, surface as an improvement. Regardless of the company's viewpoint, a changed product should be so shown in ads. I would prefer the black finish, others might prefer the current finish. Both buyer types should be informed as to what will be supplied.The plate is noticeably unflat as shown by placing it against a Lee Valley straight edge. This makes determination of saw arbor runout difficult since one must judge whether an indicated runout reflects runout on the plate or on the arbor.I have given a three star rating because some woodworkers may find the precision potential of this product adequate for their needs.