shaper fences, PM 26

[Ron Selzer]

I have had a PM26 Shaper over 30 years and have less than hours use on it, Grizzly power feeder new in box will have its 30th birthday in a few months.
I really want to get a handle on using it properly, don't feel comfortable with the factory fence setup. I had an AMT shaper kit bought back in the early 80's and used it with home-built fences. Then got the PM26 and could not get the fence to work for me. Probably will put it on a mobile base to drag it out of its corner where it hides. Hoping to find time for this after Christmas, so asking for pictures of home built fences now to think on all this.
Any tips, good books to read, magazine articles, etc. would be appreciated. I really don't have any desire to run router bits with it or to own a router table. 1/2 and 3/4 arbors. some basic 1/2 steel bits and 3/4 locking miter cutter are what I have.
Thank you
Ron

[Phillip Mitchell]

Can you be more specific or post photos of what is not working for you? Are you saying the tolerances / quality is off or the design is poor or?

[Mike Cutler]

Ron

There are books, and some videos on the shaper. This is a video that details some of the functions that can be performed. It's outdated, safety wasn't at the forefront then, like it is now, and the cutter blocks aren't really sold any longer, but for an idea, here it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n6yTHMBX54

I have a Delta 375 with the original fence, and it is horrible! It took a lot of work just to be able to use it as a coplanar fence, so I kind of understand where you're coming from.It takes a lot of fussing about.It's actually easier for me to use a back fence,than struggling with the fence that came with mine.
If I were to make my own fence, I would probably copy the nicest router fence on the market for ideas, but beef up the extrusions using the stuff from 80/20.
Post a pic, and hopefully someone can chime in.
It's a shame a machine that nice has been sitting idle for 30 years.

[andrew whicker]

I'm no shaper pro as I'm still figuring mine out, but MAN rated tooling with power feed is pretty nice. I have yet to run non MAN rated tooling and I'll certainly be more attentive when I do. So maybe start with new tooling first?

I think you could make a homemade fence (as long as you wanted coplanar outfeed and infeed surfaces) pretty easily. You have female threads in the table top, no?

[Paul Haus]

Fence_2.JPGFence_3.JPGIM002208.JPGIM002252.jpg
Though I've been using shapers for a lot of years, I've not had enough demand to justify adding a power feeder so that was never factored into the design. I've made several fences plus did a number of upgrades to the oem fence. I use them depending on the project.

[Kevin Jenness]

I've used Powermatic, Delta, SCMI and Casadei shapers. The stock split fences all required shimming to get the faces in plane. Martin probably makes a proper fence. Most of the time we used the wooden faces as backing for zero clearance fences, shimmed as needed. On my Taiwanese Northwood I have a shopmade 3/4"plywood baseplate with 2x2 blocks either side of the cutterhead and c-clamp it to the table. Crude, but the auxiliary fences are always in line. A back fence is quite useful for avoiding snipe and maintaining a specific width.

The Roy Sutton videos Mike linked to above are good. Stephenson's Shaper Handbook is the best book I know of, and the old Delta publication Getting the Most Out of Your Shaper is useful though way outdated and focused on part on specific old style Delta cutters. You can do quite a bit with a 3/4" spindle shaper but you need to be safe. A competent local mentor for hands-on training would be a good thing. A powerfeed is well worth the investment for both safety and quality reasons.

[Greg Quenneville]

You are going to need some new wheels for the feeder because they harden with age. I understand that Western Roller does great work on these but I have no personal experience.

I probably have just enough time on my shapers to be comfortable with power fed operation, but having the power feed was a must for me to even try. (In my case there's a daunting sound of 10hp spinning up a 6” steel cutter head in three seconds so it wasn’t hard to imagine all kinds of disasters)

Where i live second hand shapers are dirt cheap. If that’s true near you maybe you could find something better, perhaps even just a dud machine with a good fence. Most Italian machines that I have seen have micro adjust on each fence half and are easy to use.

[Ron Selzer]

thank you for all the replies.
the false fence shown in the you tube video should solve my major stumbling block for now.
Ron

[David Stone (CT)]

IMG_1934.jpgOn my PM 26, I made permanent fence faces from 18 mm Baltic birch that mate via tongue-and-grooves with a sacrificial insert in between and mount onto the stock PM 26 sub fence. I did this as a way to have a zero-clearance fence for better safety, without having to make a whole new face for each cutter profile. But as a bonus I’ve found it also ameliorates the annoying shortcomings of the stock fence (which from other posts on this thread sound as if they’re common to most shapers with split fences of rudimentary design). The fence face assembly is not rigid but it holds together well enough to make it much easier to line up the two fence halves using the adjustment screws and a long straight edge than it would be if the two halves were fully independent and flopping around. It’s also easier to shim if need be. (At least on my machine, the cast iron fence parts actually are machined reasonably accurately; shimming is sometimes needed, sometimes not.)

The inserts should be made wide enough to accommodate the biggest cutter. (This is particularly important on the PM 26 because the amount of east-west travel possible on the fence faces using any given set of mounting screws is actually quite limited due to the stupid design of the slots on the cast iron sub fences.) I originally made the inserts from MDF as shown, but have since made a new batch of blanks from plywood to be potentially sturdier and less tough on cutters that are steel inserts instead of carbide.

A downside to a zero-clearance fence face is that it reduces the maximum amount of cutter projection possible, since the fence can be pulled back only so far before the spindle hits the back of the insert. To minimize this, I make the insert from thinner 12 mm material and sometimes relieve the backside. (And fortunately, my used PM 26 came with a 1-inch spindle, which I bush out to run 1-1/4 tooling that has more working diameter than what would be typical for ¾ inch.)

…Finally, I agree with both your inclination to be careful and the excellent advice in all the previous replies, including the Sutton video. My suggestion—which is what I did as someone totally new to the shaper—is to start with cutter set ups that are just a slight step up from a router table in terms of the volume of cut being made and go from there.IMG_1933.jpgIMG_1929.jpgIMG_3940.jpgIMG_4058.jpg

[Ron Selzer]

David
I like your fence design, is the top piece just pressed against the fence or does it tie together some how?
Thanks
Ron

[Kevin Jenness]

Another, perhaps simpler method is to make sacrificial fences of hardwood as long as the overall fence and screw them to the wooden backer plates. They can be of any thickness and backed out with a quick bandsaw cut for maximum cutter projection. The backer plates will get peppered with screw holes over time but are easily replaced.

When breaking through a sacrificial fence, clamp down the main casting and use the adjustment screws to pull the wings back through the cutter. When breaking through with a large diameter cutter, relieve the majority of the material with a bandsaw or jigsaw first.

[J.R. Rutter]

If you countersink the attachment bolts for the wooden faces, you can adjust them as close to coplanar as possible, then take the whole assembly off and run it over the jointer.

[Mike Cutler]

If you countersink the attachment bolts for the wooden faces, you can adjust them as close to coplanar as possible, then take the whole assembly off and run it over the jointer.

That's exactly what I had to do.
It was a little nerve wracking, knowing those bolts were there, going over the jointer knives.

[Warren Lake]

hard to run a heavy fence across a jointer and keep it square to the jointer fence.

The SCM fences are good built like a tank but think they have a design glitch at least on my stuff when you tighten it pulls or can pull the fence out of shape. I need to put time into them to prove that. Last attached fence face that came on the shaper from a kitchen place was bent and far out of square to the table. The casting itself was very good out a few thou so trued that to get it perfectly square to the table first before wood was put on.,

[Walter Plummer]

I think this one has some nice features. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7JsJF5VizI