Hi all, I've been reading about installing agraffes, and the need for shims of varying thicknesses, so I thought I'd ask some questions and offer some observations. First off, a half turn of an agraffe is 0.5/32, or 0.015625" in height difference. As was pointed out, 0.010" shims aren't of much use. What I'm curious about is why anyone is using shims for alignment at all. I've found that from a pile of agraffes of about twice the number that you need of any given size, you can nearly always find one for each hole that will line up within tolerance to tighten down to final alignment without any shims at all. You just have to keep trying agraffes in each plate hole until you find the right one, and you can do that without having to crank each and every one all the way down and all the way back out when it doesn't line up correctly. Cut a piece of round bar stock the same diameter (or a very little bit smaller) to the length of the agraffe shank. It can be brass or steel, it shouldn't matter except brass is easier to work. Drill (accurately) through the center to a size a few thousandths larger than the outside shank diameter, making what amounts to a centered thick sleeve that slips over the shank. Chuck it in a lathe or drill press and face off both ends clean and square and, by trial and error, just long enough that a test agraffe screwed in and bottomed out in a plate hole will line up at the same angle with and without the spacer sleeve on the shank. You will have cut the sleeve so that you will only have to turn the agraffe in a couple of turns instead of 763 to discover how the alignment falls. The sleeve will be very close to some multiple of 1/72", since the front of an agraffe looks very like the back. You can sort and install a set of new in less time than you thought possible with nary a shim. Or are you using shims for height adjustment, and are you critical of a 0.010" difference especially when it messes up your alignment and sends you back to the pile for a different agraffe? How can you use shims for both alignment and height control unless you make them individually? I know Ron O and JD both had really slick (at least I thought so) methods of making the proper thickness shims for alignment, but where does that leave you with height? I wondered about this because I don't tend to worry a lot about height unless the difference is obnoxious, judged by eyeball with a straightedge instead of by more sophisticated means. How do the rest of you folks do this stuff without having more than one birthday during the job? PS: I bet Joe Garrett could have used one of these one day some years back. Ron N
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