I bought a 47' Tannewitz Type U last year that was mechanically in good condition. The paint is rough, but everything works very well. The fence wasn't in very good shape either.
It came with a Biesemeyer fence and rails. The faces were done. The standard Baltic Birch screwed into the steel tube with plastic laminate over the face. They had seen better days, were not straight, and the laminate was peeling off.
I was just going to make new faces like the originals since they wear well and are quite slippery when waxed up. A piece of plate aluminum was an option as well, but I didn't have any good ideas other than having T-slots machined into it for attachment. I'm a big fan of 80/20 extrusions, the stuff is like LEGOS with practical application. I looked through their catalog and found something that I thought would work. Extrusion #3075 looked like it would do the trick. It's a little tall at 3", I would have preferred it being 2-1/2" tall, but they didn't have anything that would fit the bill that I found. This saw is in the cut out area and is used almost solely for ripping plywood, so I don't think the extra height will have that much of an impact. Generally the narrowest thing that is ripped on this is 2-1/4", and I just ripped up a bunch of drops for stretchers to that size, and it wasn't bad.
I came up with four carriage bolts as being adequate. I don't know if I'm right or wrong on this. Three didn't seem like enough, five seemed excessive. I marked out the elevation of the holes, spaced them out where it seemed right and drilled a 3/8" hole for the 5/16" carriage bolts. Being that the underside of the fence is all enclosed I needed to cut some access holes to get at the bolts with a death wheel in a grinder. My access holes are kinda sloppy looking, but they won't be seen very often and the best tool I have for cleaning them up is a file. Screw that noise. It does make me think I should buy one a pneumatic speed file though.
It didn't take long. About an hour and a half from start to being done putting things away. Twenty minutes of which was probably spent looking at it and coming up with a game plan. "Plan the work, work the plan" kind of deal. They look decent and I think the long way they are pretty straight, though I haven't thrown a straight edge on it to verify that. I will say that vertically they are not that flat. Putting a straight edge on it shows a little bit of bow up and down across the face. I have not checked that since installing them though. Pulling it tight against the steel tube likely took a little bit of that out. I ripped maybe 100' of plywood on it quick, it felt good for whatever that's worth. The fences are also 3/4" thick. There isn't enough adjustment in the site glass to accommodate the change in thickness, which is fine. I anticipated that and a new peel and stick Starret tape is supposed to be here today.
The original wear parts that the fence slides on the rail and the deck of the saw were also in rough shape. I took a piece of 1/4 thick UHMW plastic and used double sided tape to stick it to a piece of lumber then ran it across the jointer a few times to make it thinner. This actually worked quite well. I was positive something was going to FAH-WANG! but it went super smooth. I eased all the edge of the plastic piece after cutting them to size to keep them from snagging on anything and just used double sided tape again to hold them in place where the fence contacts the deck and where it contacts the rail. That took a little time. I think I did that Monday.
One of these days I'll get around to making a new wing table. The one that is on there is fugly and falling apart, but for now it works and it's not a priority. I also wanted to repaint the fence tube since it's covered in some sort of adhesive, but didn't have time for it.
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Originally Posted by Peter Christensen
