Figure 2
Make Your Own Laser Leveler Getting Level Headed! by Charlie Comstock
I
’m cheap and when I was building the benchwork for the Bear Creek and South Jackson I wanted
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a convenient way of keeping the layout level (or at least close to it). I considered and rejected water levels – clear plastic tubing filled with water. Hard to use when building solo and there’s the risk of a flood. I’d seen rotating laser levels used by contractors when installing drop ceilings but investigation showed them to cost upwards of several hundred dollars. I decided to try building a flat table on which I could place (and spin) a regular laser level. I built a frame of 3/4” plywood and mounted a 12” square granite floor tile,
a flat surface, on top of three leveling screws. I put the assembly on a 2-drawer file cabinet of a convienient height and placed an inexpensive laser level on top of the granite tile and carefully adjusted the leveling screws until it was flat and level. Now I turned the level to face all the walls in my train dungeon, making pencil marks on the walls at the ‘standard height’ from the floor. I drew a reference height line between the marks using a long straightedge. Then I measured up or down from the reference Figure 3
Figure 1: My ultra-simple laserlevel platform. Figure 2: The bottom of the frame reveals a tripod base for stability. Figure 3: A detailed view of the end of each “leg” shows a cork anti-skid foot. Figure 4: I made leveling adjusters from 6x32 round head machine screws. Because the screw heads are too small for easy gripping I added a hex nut up against the screw base. Figure 1 Page 64 • Issue 11 • January 2011 • The Tool Shed - Making a Laser Leveling Tool, page 1
Figure 4
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