Fitting a New Frog Slide
This looks like a lot of steps when written out, but with practice the whole procedure shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. Try it with some pieces of popsicle sticks so you can get the feel of what you need to watch out for and how bold to be as you approach the final cut. Taking the slide in and out of the chuck will not affect accuracy at all if you don’t mischuck it, so don’t be afraid to check it often for width. When sanding the faces (front and back) of the slide, a combination of orientation of the slide and finger pressure will give you complete control of the thickness and any taper that needs to be sanded into the back of the slide.
1. Measure depth of slide dovetail in frog with the end of caliper. Check it in the four corners and the middle of slide.
2. Sand the wooden backing on pearl slide to conform to frog by checking with calipers and leaving the thickness slightly greater than frog slide depth.
3. Use the 1, 2, 3 block to set the miter fence square with the sanding wheel and check it twice as it must be perfectly square.
4. Lay the slide chuck on the table and set the top and bottom straight with each other.
5. Chuck the slide with wooden protrusion to the left and pearl up. Sand with chuck against fence to true the edge of slide and create the first dovetail.
6. Loosen top of chuck and place frog on measuring jaws with frog pointing to left. Tighten the top of chuck and slide off the frog.
7. Reverse the slide and sand the other edge straight. Adjust micrometer screw to just touch table and sand off a little more.
8. Measure in center of jaws to get width of slide.
9. Remove slide from chuck and measure width in center of slide.
10. Put slide back in chuck the same as you just had it chucked and, using the micrometer dial which moves 1mm per revolution (.1mm per number), sand off the difference of frog and slide dimensions.
11. Sand pearl side of slide to final thickness.