Small Shaper Fence Upgrade

[Mike Delyster]

I’ve had a Delta HD shaper in my shop for many years. Mine has the older style fence with no dust collection, which was pretty easy to add. A couple of magnets and some plywood and your good to go.


The fence itself though could be better. I’ve always liked the fact that I could add the Felder style safety bars to my bigger shapers and thought it would be nice to do something like that with the Delta. The small opening just didn’t make that possible.


Then last winter another member over on the Canadian site started a thread on upgrading his new to him shaper fence. Joe posted some great pictures which got me thinking.
I came up with this and I’ve been using it since the beginning of the year and I’m very happy with it.

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I used a piece of miter slot extrusion because I had a short piece in the shop. I just cut an angle piece off of it the size I needed. Then I cut a saw kerf in the bottom of my insert which the 1/8” aluminum fit into perfectly. This makes it easy to get the slot perfect to line the bar up with the face of your fence. It’s important that the bar align perfectly with the front face of the fence. Doing it with the saw kerf is easy because you can dial it in perfectly on some scrap material on the table saw.

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I made some solid inserts for this fence when I was making it, to work as a break through fence. In the last six months of using this I have only used one of the break through blanks.

[Mike Wilkins]

Great idea; hope you don't mind if I borrow this for my own Delta shaper.
By the way; what is the manufacturer of that cutter head.

[Mike Kees]

Mike I really like this fence design for edge work where there is always a continuous straight edge left to register on the fence. Do you use this shaper exclusively for this purpose or do you have another fence for it as well ?

[Mike Delyster]

Great idea; hope you don't mind if I borrow this for my own Delta shaper.
By the way; what is the manufacturer of that cutter head.

The insert rabbeting cutter is an Amana 30mm X 100mm.
You borrow away, I don't mind at all.
This fence would work on lots of shapers besides the Delta/Rockwell machines.

[Mike Delyster]

Mike I really like this fence design for edge work where there is always a continuous straight edge left to register on the fence. Do you use this shaper exclusively for this purpose or do you have another fence for it as well ?

I do have other fences for this shaper, but lately this is the one that's been on it most of the time. I all so have a couple other larger machines that I usually set up for other tasks.
If I don't need to register on the fence I usually just move the bar above the height of the stock.

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Of course this won't work if you need an offset fence.

[brent stanley]

I do have other fences for this shaper, but lately this is the one that's been on it most of the time. I all so have a couple other larger machines that I usually set up for other tasks.
If I don't need to register on the fence I usually just move the bar above the height of the stock.

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Of course this won't work if you need an offset fence.

Looks great Mike. I made a crude version of this years ago with a small, integral hood that covers the exposed block not in use, but I've upgraded that to use the Felder fence bars now.

Cheers,

B

[Mike Delyster]

Hi Brent,

I have the Felder bars on my two other shapers as well. What I've found from using them is that you really only need one bar most of the time. I find that this setup with the one bar works great plus it's a whole lot cheaper. With the size of the Felder bar set they're not a very good option for these smaller machines. I looked at it many times and couldn't come up with a way to use them with this size of fence plates.
The addition of the bar makes it possible to work with short pieces of stock safely.