Cut PM66 fence rail?

[Jon Snider]

I have a late 90’s yellow PM66. With new addition of a slider I’m trying to decide to keep it or sell it. Keeping it gives me chance of running a dado blade or maybe some long rips I’m not comfortable with on slider.

One option is position it on outfeed side of slider, but to make it fit I’d have to cut the Bies fence rail to allow room for sliding table and outrigger. Amy advice here on better ways, or how much a replacement yellow rail would be?

Thx. Jon

[Jim Becker]

It's not uncommon for a fence rail to be cut down for any number of reasons. Most folks are unlikely to ever actually use that 50" of capacity, but still opt to buy the "big one". While it would be nice to find an alternate rail, if you can't just cut it to fit your needs. IMHO. (For the record, my slider had nearly that 50" fence capacity and I shortened it 16" to fit into my space given I'd never be ripping anything wide with it anyway)

[Mike Kees]

Jon I have the exact same setup you are asking about. I have my Unisaw "in the corner " behind my Felder k700 slider. I kept my original 52'' fence and purchased a used 32'' Unifence rail on Ebay which I had to cut down to 20''. I use this saw for narrow rips mostly. With the bies you could just save the tube and rail and purchase some steel tubing and fabricate a shorter rail.

[Greg Parrish]

Make a clean cut where you want and save the cut off piece. If you ever want it back on there, insert a piece of steel tube that just slips inside, drill hole on either side through bottom and back and tap for bolts. Then you can put the same cut piece back on. Seems like it should work in theory anyway.

[Jon Snider]

Thanks all. Was out of town and just now saw this. Very helpful.