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Thread: Building Fence for Table Saw

  1. #16
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    New England, in a town on the way to nowhere
    Posts
    537
    Back to the OP's original query-
    I built the bolt together fence when the article came out in Fine Woodworking magazine years ago, still have it stored around here somewhere.
    It works great! I built mine with basically a pistol drill and a set of hand taps with the exception of the steel locking bar which I drilled on a friends drill press so it would be square. I used set screws instead of rivets to lock the handle in place. I never bothered to put a cursor or self stick tape to it being so used to setting the fence with a rule or tape.
    I used the fence on three different saws over the years, and never had any problems with it. I plan on using it again when I can wrangle the space to set up another saw as I made mine to be able to rip 50". I could get a shorter piece of Unistrut, but i prefer to have the larger capacity.
    Build it, you'll be very happy with it

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Sep 2016
    Location
    Modesto, CA, USA
    Posts
    9,882
    Metal bedframes are often hot riveted together. The rivet is inserted while redhot and peened into place. As it cools it shrinks and tightens up the joint. Used on the Titanic, Eiffel tower etc before welding was invented. Arc welding started to replace it around ww2.
    Bill D

  3. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Dufour View Post
    Metal bedframes are often hot riveted together. The rivet is inserted while redhot and peened into place. As it cools it shrinks and tightens up the joint. Used on the Titanic, Eiffel tower etc before welding was invented. Arc welding started to replace it around ww2.
    Bill D
    Riveting was also used on boilers of railroad steam engines. Think of the operating pressure (300 # PSI), and vibrations they experienced.

  4. #19
    I built that first one years ago for a home made table saw. It worked but was nothing like the fence on my SawStop PCS. If I was going to make one today, I would make one like the John Heisz design already mentioned. On my PCS, the connection between the angle iron that rides the front rail and the steel fence is welded. You have a screw to adjust the angle by changing how it rides the rail. This is a much more solid way to do this. A bolted joint is going to move more easily under pressure. Especially if aluminum is involved. Unistrut is steel but it not really meant to be used this way and isn't precision machined.

    I just think absent the ability to weld you will have a better end result using wood. It won't be terribly rigid but your home made steel and aluminum one will not be as solid as a steel Beismeyer type either.

  5. #20
    With parts prepped, the welding to make a Biese Clone will take less than 30 minutes. I know as I have built several over the years.

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