MasterGage Classic and MasterPlate Review

MasterGage made setup and alignment gauges, including the MasterGage Classic and the MasterPlate. Availability through normal retail has become unreliable, and there is no dependable Amazon listing.

The underlying idea is sound and cheap to replicate.

The problem setup gauges solve

You cannot accurately set a blade or a bit with a ruler. A steel rule held against a table saw blade is read by eye at an angle, the graduations are 0.5mm apart at best, and the tooth you are measuring to is set out from the plate. Everyone who has cut a dado 0.3mm too deep has done it this way.

A setup block replaces reading with touching. You have a piece of steel ground to exactly 12mm. You raise the blade until it touches the block. The blade is at 12mm. There is nothing to read and nothing to interpret.

That single change is why these have become standard in shops that do repeatable joinery.

Where they genuinely earn their place

Router bit projection, especially for rebates and grooves that must match a specific sheet thickness.

Table saw blade height for half-laps and dados, where the error is doubled when two pieces meet.

Jointer and thicknesser knife setting, where the difference between knives being level and being nearly level is a ridged surface.

Fence-to-blade distance, using the blocks against the fence rather than the tape.

The habit that makes them work

Wipe the table and the block every time. A setup block is a reference; a speck of dust under it is a measurable error. Machinists keep gauge blocks clean for exactly this reason and it applies just as much on a saw table.

Stack blocks to get intermediate sizes, and stack them faces-clean and squarely — two dirty faces stacked is two errors.

What to buy

The iGaging setup block bar gauge set, linked below, is 15 ground steel blocks in common increments. They are simple objects with no mechanism, which is exactly why they hold their accuracy indefinitely.

If you need to check that a saw’s blade is parallel to the mitre slot — a different problem — you want a dial indicator on a sled, not a setup block. The blocks set heights; they do not check alignment.