Breakdown (The complete "Poor Man's" technique)
Equipment:
Dremel
Dremel Router Table ($29)
Reinforced Cutoff Disks (container of 20)
I live in an apartment and do not have access to any heavy machinery so this setup worked perfect. I did design a setup utilizing drawer rollers but decided to go totally poor man's style so I used only the guide on the Dremel Router Table to line up the cuts.
After mounting the router table to a $15 coffee table from that was sitting around, I started measuring and measuring and measuring. There was already a mill line lightly running along the rails right above the dust cover and that turned out to measure just about right. I scribed a solid line above that mark then measured for the upper cut, then scribed a line for that as well.
I wasn't really concerned about making super straight cuts, as this was just an experiment. I adjusted the guide and the height of the dremel to match the first line and began cutting well within the boundary. The first cut turned out crooked and the depth all messed up so I readjusted everything. I cut along the lines, then began moving in to clear out the rest in between.
The best method was to keep the cuts really really shallow and to do multiple runs (3 dry runs per cut). After each run, I simply adjusted the guide to go just a hair deeper then went at it again. It took about 8 disks total and around 10-12 runs on each side to get the rails within specs. After making the intial cuts, I then attached 2 disks together to get the rest of the metal out and square everything off.
That was it! The rest was filing and sanding compound. All in all, it took approximately 2-3 hours to complete just cutting the rails. I kept the rpm low and moved like a snail. Patience payed off here. The rail fits like a glove and I'm waiting for the rest of the lower parts to fit everything else prior to blueing.
Co7t