Setting the plate

[Clark A Sprague]

List,  I have been working on my beloved Baldwin R for a long time now. 
I can only spend a couple hours a night on it, as my store job keeps me
busy 8-10+ hours per day, but I hope to finish it in this lifetime (
hopefully sometime this fall).
        I am to the point of setting the plate, and tonight I got out my
trusty dial calipers, and measured the dowels.  To my amazement, I got
readings that were all over the place.  As much as .020 difference in the
dowels of the same pair.  Is this normal?  Should I attempt to take them
down, as I read in the article in the Journal reprints, or should I take
them off and use the Baldwin Plate Suspension system, as also described
in the Reprints?          
        I know that there is minimal crown in the old board, and one
technician looked at it with me the other day, and said that he would
take them all down the thickness of a penny, but no more than a nickel. 
I think I would like to be a bit more exacting than that! But then
again............
       There are no plate bosses on this one, the bottom surface of the
plate is flat, and probably not very regular in thickness from one side
of the hole to the other.  Could this explain why there are differences
of dowel length in the same pair,  they just made sure that the plate
rested evenly on all of them?  Or just not exacting in their methods back
in 1943?
        Opinions, advice all? 

Clark Sprague