Table saw fence flatness

[Dave VanDewerker]

This happened to my PM fence. The UHMW face on the fence wore right around blade (.006). It was enough to cause burning whenever I was ripping. I replaced it with a piece or extruded aluminum.

[Meryl Logue]

I have an old 1984 PM66. It was in a custom furniture shop. They had to replace the original face at some point with a type of synthetic. They flipped that. I had to flip it back... it was less trashed. But I did buy a new UHDP or whatever it’s called. It screwed it on using their original holes. I then shimmed it with slips of paper or card stock. Last task was to glue scraps of an old health card under one of the stabilizer wings of the fence to square it to the table. Huge difference. No more burning or hanging up. They used it to break down miles of sheet goods. They were on the second feeder when I got it.

[Michael J Evans]

I too have hand planed UHMW but, for your task I wold be more inclined to put sand paper on a flat surface and rub it back and forth a bit. If your reference surface is good you should be able to gt much closer than you are. BTW, the problem you describe is what kept me from getting a UNI-T fence many years ago. I would not hesitate today having gained some skill in making things "un-crooked". ;-)

Hi Glen the UHMW strip is only maybe 2" wide x approx 1/2" think x 43" long. I am afraid even just slight uneven pressure would cause more damage than it current has. Plusy float glass is only 48" long.

[Michael J Evans]

Michael, if this was mine, I’d first call Peachtree and report the issue. They may sort it out for you.

If I set out to fix it myself, I would mark the high spots on the fence, and plane those down with a block plane.

Only if this failed would I replace the face with something else. Probably not hardwood — this moves. Waxed MDF?

Regards from Perth

Derek

I may do that Monday just to get their thoughts before doing anything. Thanks.

[Michael J Evans]

Hi everyone. Hope all doing well.

Just wanted to update this thread. I received some zero slop adjustable miter bars and made a new jig to hold my dial indicator.

Spent way to many hours fiddling with my setup. Got my original unisaw fence dialed in, but then just couldn't help myself and took one more stab at the new UNI-T fence.

I layed a 12" framing square across the UNI-T fence while it was off the actual unifence carrier thing. It was not dead flat as in zero light shining thru but overall it was really flat and I couldn't replicate the rocking I had while it was on the unifence carrier or whatever that's called. So I stuck it back on the saw and only lightly tightened the bolts that hold the fence to the saw. Instead of killing myself with the dial indicator to start, I ended up setting the fence parallel to slot using my finger tip. Then I broke out the dial indicator and only measured the front and back, it was within 1 thou and I decided good enough.

I just bought a 1/2 sheet of MDF for my micro jig splitter setup and ripped a 48" length to 4.5".

The front of the piece was 4.5095
The rear of the piece was 4.5075 and everything in between was within 2-3 thou depending on how hard I pushed.

That seems pretty good to me, right?

I'm wondering if when I originally tightened the fence to the saw, if I over tightened the front bolt and that somehow bowed the extrusion? I feel that's highly unlikely as it's pretty damn stiff. Either that or my original miter gauge had more slop throughout the slop then I thought?

Either way I'm pretty happy with the setup now (convincing myself, because I feel like it should be dead on) unless someone says otherwise 😂

Thanks for reading