Sliding table saw sacrificial fence

[Ralph Butts]

Just curious has anyone has made a sacrificial fence for a sliding table saw fence? I have a slider with the dado option and I am wondering if and how others have attached a sacrificial fence to the rip fence. The rip fences on these are not your typical Beismeyer I style fence. I have a MM S315. I know there are several other sliding table saw manufacturer's that offer a dado option and I was hoping someone else out there had a good way of accomplishing this. There are time when the dado stack would already be on the saw, I want to make a rabbet and the saw is already setup rather than to setup the shaper. Looking for a better mouse trap, I didn't like mine.

[Mark Bolton]

If it's hi-lo fence you can just put it in the high position and clamp a board to it?

[ian maybury]

Hi Ralph. Seems like a lot of your issue may be that the S315 fence extrusion doesn't have slots for T nuts.

I'm sure the Minimax guys have a way of doing this (i run a Hammer K3), but two fairly standard methods used by those with 'blind'' fence faces seem to be either to build a 'h' section sacrificial fence that drops over the stock one, and is retained by clamping screws through the non working side - or to use a fence clamp like these: http://www.rockler.com/universal-fence-clamps which have the advantage of being able to be set up to bring the clamping force to bear down near the middle of the face of the stock fence.

The MM cast iron fence mounting bracket is a pretty bulky item - which while it probably does a great job of holding everything in alignnment may complicate access.

Double sided tape or adhesive film (all over for security) would at a push mount a sacrificial board, or a board into which could be screwed the sacrificial facing - but it's not conveniently removable. It is do-able - heating the fence extrusion with a hot air gun to maybe 60 deg or so will soften the adhesive so it peels off fairly easily if you get something like a thin edged knife under it.

[Erik Loza]

Ralph, I have seen my guys use double-sided tape to the aluminum extrusion in the past. Or, create a more serious sacrificial face, drill and tap the Alu fence, then screw the plate to the extrusion. Either MDF or the that white plastic stuff. The drop-over "H"-profile is a good idea, too. My colleague, Sam, uses something very similar on his bandsaw fences...



Best,

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Steve Jenkins]

I just drilled a couple holes in my aluminum fences and screwed a piece of mdf to it

[Ralph Butts]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. As I said originally I just wanted to see if there was a better way of doing it.

[Rick Potter]

I have a Unifence which looks a lot like the Felder fence I used to have.

As Steve said, I just drilled two holes in it and use those to attach a sacrificial fence or other jigs to the fence extrusion.

Rick P

[Kevin Nathanson]

I have a Felder K700. I use the Rockler clamps mentioned earlier with a 'drop-over' fence. My fence is a tigerstop, but it has the same profile issues you refer to; my sacrificial fence is two layers of 3/4" MDF.

K