That cheap miter gauge I bought off auction site ate 2 full days

Picked up a no-name miter gauge for $40 on an online auction last month thinking it was a steal. Spent a whole afternoon trying to square it up and every cut still came out 2 degrees off. Next morning I checked the fence face with a straight edge and it was bowed in the middle by nearly 1/16 inch. Should have just put that money toward a used Incra off Craigslist. Has anyone else got burned by bargain measuring tools lately?

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king.ruby19d ago

2 degrees off" is exactly what happened to me with a cheap gauge last spring. I spent a whole weekend fighting mine, checking the blade, the fence, everything, then finally took a caliper to the gauge's bar and found it was twisted, not just bowed. The whole thing was machined so poorly that the slots weren't even parallel to each other, so no amount of adjusting would ever fix it. I was so mad because I'd already planned a whole cabinet project around those cuts and had to redo half the panels. Now I just use a speed square for rough stuff and save up for the good tools, even if it means waiting an extra month. Cheap measuring stuff is the worst kind of false economy, honestly.