Aigner Shaper Fence (long)

[Mike Waddell]

Good Evening, Everyone!

(Sorry for the long post!)

I posted a short time ago with a question about an aftermarket shaper hood. Well, I had ordered an Aigner shaper fence and was looking for a better hood than the unit that came with my Minimax CU300Smart, but I ended up mounting the Aigner fence to the Minimax hood and thought I'd post a few pictures of the unit and provide a little feedback on the Aigner unit after taking a little time to get used to using it.

To begin, the Aigner fence is a very heavy duty aluminum piece built in Germany (I believe) and is extremely well made and precise. As you will see in some of the pictures, it has some very interesting features (take a peek at the fingers that extend over the cutter head!).

Mounting the unit was pretty straight forward. Though the Minimax hood didn't accept the much thicker mounting bolts on the Aigner, the issue was easily remedied with a little boring out of the existing mounting slots on the Minimax unit with a hand file. The Minimax hood is made of aluminum, but is much lighter and easier to modify. With a little adjusting of the Minimax unit, the Aigner fence mounted pretty easily and squarely without much fuss (a small amount of shimming to bring the two fence pieces to a coplanar state was all that was necessary).

Once mounted, the Aigner and Minimax units work well together. The fence pieces move inward and outward smoothly, and the Aigner fence has a feature that allows you to raise and lower the fence vertically on it's own mounts. Sliding some pieces of wood in front of the unit proved to also be very smooth, with the added weight of the Aigner fence making the whole process seem much more solid.

The fingers that eject from one side of the fence to span the gap between the two fence pieces are awesome. A great safety feature, these fingers reduce the chance of me slipping my already mangy fingers into the "spinning blades of death" as my wife refers to them.

I purchased the unit through Minimax after seeing Sam Blasco of Minimax use his during a recent shaper seminar (if you don't use your shaper, I highly recommend you learn from Sam how to put it to good use!). Though it is not cheap, for those of you that use your shapers often it will add greatly to the safety of using this great tool.

Hope you enjoy the pics!

Mike

[Jim Becker]

I first saw one of those at Steve Jenkin's shop, if I'm recalling correctly. It's a really nice system and very well thought out. Congrats on this nice upgrade to your shaper setup!

[Mike Waddell]

I first saw one of those at Steve Jenkin's shop, if I'm recalling correctly. It's a really nice system and very well thought out. Congrats on this nice upgrade to your shaper setup!

Hi Jim -

Steve was nice enough to help out on my original post regarding the shaper hood. Seems like you have a bunch of pretty good woodworkers in your area, and I hope that I can find more near me also.

Thanks for the congrats, Jim! Hope you are enjoying that new slider (oops! "Wagon")!

[Jim Becker]

There are lots of woodworking folks in your area, Mike. Oh, and Dr. SWMBO grew up in Falls Church on Executive Drive when they were not living in more exoitic places like Thailand or Korea. ("Government Work, as it were...")

Steve is a "regular" visit target for me when I get the DFW area business, although it's a little tougher on the time line now that he moved up to McKinney. His old shop was only a few miles from my "office" in Coppell. That big old Altendorf slider he has is a monster...and the shaper he has the Aigner fence on is quite impressive, too.

[Mike Waddell]

Hi Jim -

I've met some great people in the area here. A see some of them now and again, but I'd enjoy hanging more often with them.

Life's pace has its drawbacks! We'll get it together sooner or later.

Have a great night,

Mike

[lou sansone]

mike
what fence does come standard with the mm shaper ? What made you swap it out?
lou

[Steve Strickler]

Mike, great fence. I looked at that once before...
Is it made of platinum? Is there a spare shaper that comes with it?

Looks like a great addition though.

[Mike Waddell]

Good Morning, Folks -

Lou, the Minimax CU300Smart comes with a fence that is two wooden pieces that attach to the hood seen in the attached photos. While they are basically flat (I had to skim them on the jointer and then the planer to make them a little better), they are somewhat smaller than I thought they should be.

Being woodworkers we could very easily make new fences out of some stable wood products and attach them to the hood, and we could (and should!) build sacrificial zero clearance fences for safety and reduce tear-out operations.

The Aigner fence, while expensive, still affords me the opportunity to make zero clearance fences and provides an enlarged and stable front from which to work.

Steve, it doesn't come with an additional shaper, but it does come with this newfangled "box" made of "cardboard" that conveniently takes up all the excess space left in my trashcan. What will those German engineers come up with next?!

All the best,

Mike

[Bailey John]

Mike,

I'll add my $.02 as I grew up in FC near 7 Corners (when it was a real Mall). My dad got me into WW back then and he had some good WW'ing friends in that area in 70's and 80's when we lived there. Although I dont now how he did it in a house less that 2000 sqft.

Since then I moved to newer dev. in Loudoun and have met some locals. In fact Woodcraft opened up a store in Leesburg and it seems to get good traffic. FC is a great location as its convenient to DC, MD, VA. Next time Mike Morgan does a lumber run this way or we can get a group together for a buy here http://www.hazwoodworks.com/ or Hicksville Mill, let me know.

[Mike Waddell]

Lets get the entire Northern VA/MD/DC area woodworking community together!

In all seriousness, a good wood supply would be fantastic.

Mike

[Brad Shipton]

Mike, I am looking for a different shaper fence setup for my machine and found this discussion. Care to offer an update after using it for a while? I found the PanHans products (more european stuff) and they do offer a much heavier cutter cover/dust collect, but at $1600 one has to think about it.

Thanks