Kawboy's restoration/conversion of a 1980 KZ13

Wow, how did you manage to cut so straight by hand?

I cannot cut straight or drill straight

zed_thirteen wrote:

Wow, how did you manage to cut so straight by hand?

I cannot cut straight or drill straight

Normally or maybe better put, in my past life, I would use tool maker's ink and a vernier to lay out the cutline. I lieu of toolmaker's ink you can use a permanent marker, preferrably a NEW permanent marker. All I had was an old dried out marker in red. (use can just see it on the cut plate pic.) So after coloring in the area where you want to make the cut, in this case I set my vernier to .650" and locked the vernier at that setting, then guided 1 jaw of the vernier along the mating adge for the cover plate and marked the side of the valve plate pocket with the tip of the 2nd jaw to lay out the line. The hardest part of the cut is the first 1/2" until the blade is fully in the cut ,  then the blade is almost self guiding. I used a 32 TPI blade to make the cut and it has a fine kerf, so as long as you get the blade going in straight, it's pretty hard to get off line.