Another home-brewed parallel guide.

[Dane]

So after checking out the new Festool Parallel Guide, I decided that it was a bit over engineered and fussy for my needs.  I realize that no matter how easy they try to make it, I am never going to rip narrow strips with the guide rail in any great numbers my little dewalt table saw just does that too well.  Plus I can use that other parralell guide thing that attaches to the saw for that.  So what I really needed was a way to repeatably do rips from say, 12" to 30".  I was banging around Lowes the other day and came across these folding, adjustable drywall squares and thought I would give them a shot.  They adjust to 48", but I realized that never in my career have I needed to repeatably rip 48", so I chopped about 16" off of the guides to reduce the weight.  You could certainly leave that 16" on and it would work just as well, but be a bit heavier and more of a dangle on the narrower rips.  I have built two cabinets with this setup, and so far have had no noticeable variations in width of any of my cut pieces.  I checked those square with my most accurate square and they are pretty good.  Certainly good enough for this operation which is really just trying to keep them parallel to each other so that you don't get deviations in the width due to the guide running at an angle.  I am showing two different clamping methods, the Festool Clamps and the quick squeeze clamps.  The squeeze clamps are much easier to use and even with the jig set to its lowest point, and then having about 25" of hang off the workpiece, they keep it in place.  Plus they take no time to attach.

Here's the set up:

Make your mark on the first workpiece, place the rail on the mark and adjust the square. [attachimg=1]

Set the second square to the first:[attachimg=2]

Clamp the squares to the work, place rail, cut, repeat.[attachimg=3][attachimg=4]

The advantages to this system to the Festool guide as I see it are:  Cheap, about 50.00 including two clamps.  Guide are supported by the work and the clamps, no weird tables to build or cobbled together supports.  You can use it on any width material, I have ripped 1/4" ply with no issue.  Fast, once you get it set, which takes about a minute, resetting for subsequent rips take about 10 seconds.

 

[Dane]

Oh, also you can have full support under the workpiece, in one of my photos, you can see that the clamp is off to the side, but if you are working with a piece that is smaller than your foam support, you can clamp from the back and the you just need to let the work overhand the cut table by about an inch for the clamp to grab.  Also, if you really wanted to get crazy with the thing you could sand off the existing rules, and attach some adhesive rulers that are cut down to the width of the rail and have an accurate set up with out first marking the workpiece.  Alternately, you could use the rule that are already on the things and do the math, but I have really just found it easiest to just mark the first workpiece and get on with it.

 

[GreenGA]

That is a very nice implementation.  I like that it would work very easily ripping your 8' ply panels right down the middle.

Thanks.

 

[Dave Ronyak]

... Also, if you really wanted to get crazy with the thing you could sand off the existing rules, and attach some adhesive rulers that are cut down to the width of the rail and have an accurate set up with out first marking the workpiece.  Alternately, you could use the rule that are already on the things and do the math, but I have really just found it easiest to just mark the first workpiece and get on with it.

Dane, 

Instead of sanding off the markings, could you not cut off a portion of the length of the rule that abuts the back of the Guide Rail, the amount to be cut off corresponding exactly to the width of your Guide Rail (including trimmed splinter strip)?

Dave R.

 

[Dane]

You could, and I thought about it but I requires a compromise.  If you look at the squares, the x axis slides in a groove that goes through the y axis.  That groove allows you to adjust from 0 to 24" on one side of the rule, then the groove stops and to get from 24" to 48" you flip the rule and start from the 24" mark and work the other way.  So, if you cut the 7" or so off the grooved side, then you cut off the piece that connects the two sides created by the groove.  If you cut off the other side, then you are stuck using the side that starts at 24" which isn't quite as useful.  So, the only optin I could come to that would let you do narrow rips would be to attach a rule.