Woodpeckers Auxiliary Rip Fence

[Bob le Bricoleur]

Please, have a look at the following picture : Hongdhui stock guides on a Woodpeckers Versa Fence. It works just fine !

 

[derekcohen]

Serious questions: How much of this is fashion? How much is added precision?

Many prefer the use of a half-length fence, reaching as far as the saw blade. I have one like this on my K3 Hammer. the argument is that support is only needed as far as the blade. After this, there is danger of pinching and kickback.

The fence on my bandsaw runs, similarly, as far as the blade.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Michael Kellough]

A long fence can help you straighten boards (in lieu of a jointer).

I sometimes clamp an 8 foot level to my fence to easily shorten boards up to (nearly) 4 feet.
Just put the concave edge against the fence and trim the opposite edge.

With a little strategic shimming I can straighten 6 foot boards by adding (securely taping) a shim between the concave edge and the fence at around 3 feet from the end.

 

[smorgasbord]

Many prefer the use of a half-length fence, reaching as far as the saw blade. I have one like this on my K3 Hammer. the argument is that support is only needed as far as the blade. After this, there is danger of pinching and kickback.

The fence on my bandsaw runs, similarly, as far as the blade.

I've wondered about half-fences as well. Here's a 17 year old video (it's so old he hawks DVDs at the end):

This has been a standardish thing on bandsaws, I think, because resawing boards is common on bandsaws and resawing commonly releases stresses in boards that make them warp as you cut. There's almost no danger of kickback on a bandsaw with rectangular stock, so the reason for the half-fence is to avoid the board warping after the cut from affecting the portion of the cut still to be made (which is something I've personally experienced).

My Inca 2100 tablesaw has a two-piece fence where the cutting side can be slid forwards or back. With its built-in riving knife (rare for a 1980's saw in the US), kickback hasn't been an issue, but I do wonder if sliding the fence towards me so that it ends just after the front teeth finish cutting wouldn't be safer and maybe have less burning (although burning is really an issue for me either, it does occassionally happen). Heck, even my jointer's fence doesn't extend very far past the cutter (there's way more on the infeed side).

Perhaps there's an issue with tablesaw cutting in an arc versus the bandsaw cutting vertically. On the bandsaw, if aligned well, the cut finishes with a couple millimeters, whereas on the tablesaw the teeth at the bottom "finish" before the teeth at the top by a few centimeters. But there you'd just have to support to the top of the cut, so maybe that's not an issue.

The only reason I haven't done more testing of this on the tablesaw is that I've shimmed my two-piece fence such that the working surface is quite flat. I think that since both my steel backing fence piece and the aluminum channels I've used for the facing fence are not straight enough for me, that sliding the aluminum facing fence would mean re-shimming again, which is a pain. Maybe I should take the time to flatten the steel fence such that it flattens the aluminum channel where-ever it's attached or something.

I would like to hear from people who have used half-fences on the tablesaw extensively. We already know that side pushing featherboards need to be placed only in front of the blade, but I have used top-down pushing wheels behind the blade as well with success.

 

[jeffinsgf]

Used and sold half-fences on KITY machines in the 80s and 90s. Tough sell until you could get someone to actually listen to the logic. Still use one on my K-5 combination. My INCA band saw fence is short, but extends probably 4 or 5 inches past the blade. I wanted to include using the Aux Fence and Versa-Fence as half-fences in the videos. The engineers and upper management looked at me like I was from Mars. I giggle at Harvey trying to convince people their two-piece sliding fence is revolutionary. I thought about sending them reprints of old KITY, INCA, Robland and Felder catalogs from the 80s (and earlier).

 

[smorgasbord]

...The engineers and upper management looked at me like I was from Mars. I giggle at Harvey trying to convince people their two-piece sliding fence is revolutionary. I thought about sending them reprints of old KITY, INCA, Robland and Felder catalogs from the 80s (and earlier).

Yeah, just watching that old video I linked above and seeing the piece just drop nicely away from the blade at the end of the cut was, well, surprising to me. I guess there's a part of me that intuitively thinks an 8-foot long board that has only an inch of fence support at the end of the cut is itself dangerous depending on what the outfeed support is like, but that intuition is probably wrong.

It's like all the YouTubers showing miter fence alignment to a tablesaw blade, which is objectively not the optimal practice for both accuracy and ease of alignment. People often think I'm crazy until I ask them how to adjust a miter gauge's fence for use on a router table. Just take your 1812 square and put the blade against the miter bar and the heel against the miter fence and tighten the locking knob. Done and accurate.

The other use of the half fence is as a stop for cross-cuts, of course.

BTW, I've since gone from dial indicators for slot/blade and blade/fence alignment to blocks of wood with Sharpie. I find it easier and since it's done dynamically with the blade spinning I think overall it's better. If anyone interested I'll start a separate thread on that.

 

[Mini Me]

I am 76 and the first thing my father told me when I began to use the TS he built was that the fence must always toe out to prevent kickback and jamming and I was then only a young teenager. When I bought my Hammer slider the first thing I removed from it was the full length rip fence then I shortened it with a saw. The main reason for that was it stuck out too far when it was in the proper position of being a half fence and I had to walk around the end of it which was a pain. I have since worked out that the only reason it is the length it is was because Felder used the same fence on the combination machines and I should have simply cut the thing in half and be done with it. The short length I did cut off serves as a bump stop which lives on the rip fence head while the full length fence collects dust on the shelf and is used on very odd occasions for longer rips. 

 

[hdv]

If you use your fence as a bump stop, make sure you have an easy and repeatable way to switch the fence between a toe-out position and an exact parallel position. Otherwise your measurements will be off. Unless you will always bump your stock at the exact same position, but that is hardly practical.

 

[Mini Me]

The bump stop I use is only 200mm long and the angle makes no measurable difference that can be detected when the piece is cut. I only use it for solid wood pieces and not for panel sized cuts as the measuring is done on the outrigger for those. My saw is a short stroke slider not a panel saw and the difference is often not recognised even by the owners.