Table saw fence alignment

[Nick Decker]

I recently picked up the Woodpeckers Saw Gauge, a clever little gadget, and I'm a sucker for clever gadgets.

Anyway, in the instructions for checking alignment between miter slot and rip fence, they say the following:

"You can set up your rip fence either parallel or slightly wide with the out-feed from the miter slot by .003" to .005" than the infeed. This tends to reduce burn marks and kick-back."

I guess I can kinda visualize how that would work, but it's news to me. Any thoughts?

[Brad Barnhart]

a square & tape measure have always been my squaring tools. Them fancy gizmos are alright if ya have deep pockets, but I never have. I've always used what works for me. Same for you. If it works for ya, stick'er in the wind & go for it!

[Nick Decker]

Yup, to each his own. I just hadn't heard the bit about opening up the outfeed end.

[Rick Moyer]

Theory there is once the material passes the blade a few thousandths out won't matter. Reduces the chance of pinching and kickback.

[Lee Schierer]

Some folks set the out feed end of their fence a little wide as noted. I don't. Once I aligned my blade to the miter slot and the fence to the miter slot with a dial indicator I don't get any burning and virtually no tooth marks. What small marks there are are very very hard to see.

As far as cost. For $20 you can buy a dial indicator from any harbor freight location, mount it to your miter gauge with a block of wood and a wood screw or two and you can dial in tour blade and fence in a short period of time. The $20 spent on the dial indicator comes back quickly by spending less time removing burn marks from board edges and your saw will perform much better.

[Cary Falk]

I never toe out my fence at the rear of the blade. I keep it parallel as possible and haven't had any problems.

[Nick Decker]

FWIW, my fence was/is about .002" out, came that way from the factory (SawStop). It's never caused a problem so I plan to leave it be. I'm pretty sure if I messed with it I'd make it worse.

[Sean Tracey]

Your dealing with a fence which is long and not perfectly stiff. Thousandths of an inch are very small things. Those that say they have set up their fence parallel are assuming that it will stay perfectly parallel which is unrealistic on many woodworking machine setups. At best, they have measured the parallelism at one particular fence setting where they can check it and have no idea what the parallelism is at some other point where they can't. Also, things move. In reality, if the fence is perfectly parallel when set-up, it likely varies from tight at the back to loose at the back.

The idea is that there is no such thing as perfectly parallel, so set the fence to be .003 to .005" wide at the back of the table compared to the front of the table and you will be less likely to have a condition where the fence is narrower at the back of the table. If the fence is narrower at the back, the back of the blade will be cutting the workpiece and trying to lift it or causing the blade and workpiece to be pinched by the fence.

This is not good.

Cutting tools typically have clearance. Saw blades, drill bits and many other tools are ground to have clearance so only the cutting edge contacts the workpiece. If you fence is narrow at the back, then the work piece is infringing on that clearance.

Obviously, you don't want your blade to be too far out of parallel in either direction.

I set up my fence years ago to have 0.004" more clearance at the back of the fence vs the front. I checked it yesterday, and found out it is now about 0.002 tight at the back of the fence vs the front.

It isn't burning or trying to kick back. I don't know exactly how many thousands tight at the rear it would take to start burning or be more likely to cause kick back, but I do believe that having that 0.003 to 0.005 is probably a good idea to lessen the likelihood of having too much pinch.

[Thomas Canfield]

I have the mentioned saw gage and it does work well. My preference is to have the fence parallel to slot and blade parallel to both. I occasionally will move fence to other side of blade and any offset would then be a problem. Before gage, I made my own using a brass screw on stick attached to runner in slot that I could check a single marked blade tooth at front and then rear of cut. Lots of ways to do it, but the alignment tool might have some advantages. It really is nice to have good alignment. You can also hear good alignment if you cut a board with fence on both side of blade and do not hear any drag at back end of cut.

[Ben Rivel]

Isnt this mentioned in the SawStop manual? I think it suggests is as an option. Personally I setup mine up to be as parallel as possible.

Oh and if you love setup tools like the Woodpeckers Saw Gauge, check out the Betterley UNA-Gauge (LINK, LINK). I started with the Woodpeckers too and sold it after getting the UNA-Gauge. Sooo much more versatile.