Making The Ultimate DIY Table Saw Fence

in this video I'll be building my table saw fence from the plans that are available on my website and if you're interested in building one of these for yourself there's a link in the description that'll take you right there after printing the plans I got started cutting out the parts and getting those ready now I'm not going to show much of that other than to go into a bit more detail on a couple of the parts that are a little bit tricky or demand more precision like these ones right here the hole I'm drilling has to be located in exactly the same place on each one so I've set my fence on the drill press with a stop block and that gives me the same location every time also the cam handle which is probably the most difficult part to make in the whole build on the original build I laid this out in two pieces before drilling the holes but here I'm going to glue them together clap that up and let it dry before drilling them both together [Music] [Music] with those parts made now the way we can move on to General Assembly I'm gonna start with the mounting rail for the fence and this is in three pieces and to help hold the parts in line while I get the screws driven in I'm driving in some pins and that's mainly because I have the pin nailer and also speeds things up especially when you're doing this on camera [Applause] [Music] to fasten the third part to the bracket I need to shorten the one inch screws that I have it's going to snip off the end with these cutters and the reason is they are a little bit too long they'll poke through the surface after going through the two layers a half inch plywood next I can get the fence trail itself put together and this is just two layers of half-inch plywood and I'm gonna glue together and once again I'm going to use pins to hold the parts and line and then clamp it down to the flat surface of my table saw [Music] keeping these parts flat and straight especially while the glue dries is very important now after the glue dried on the fence rail I trimmed just a very small amount off to even up both sides the rail starts off three inches wide but it really won't hurt to cut a little bit off the fence will still fit this is the tea for the fence and once again this is assembled with glue and pins to hold it in place until I can get the screws driven [Music] [Music] I'm sanding the top of the tea to make it nice and flush and clean it up because it'll be visible it'll be hard to sand after I glue on the spacer block which I'm doing right here after the glue dried on that I can start assembling the main part of the fence and it's very important that this lines up square with the T so I've drawn a line I'm a workbench to check that and I'll continue to check it after I complete each step this is a rub plate that I've made from a piece of aluminum and this gets fastened at the ends but not tightly you want to loosen the screw slightly after you get it driven in all of the way [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] next I can get the parts that the cab handle pivots on attached and these have to be very strongly fastened and lined up correctly I'm going to take the pivot pin and put in there to make sure that they are and with that done I can get the cam handle put in and check the action against the rub plate and this looks good it's moving the rub plate more than enough to grip the fence rail this is the pointer from the old fence actually I just painted a red this time to mix things up with the size attached I can get the top of the fence put on and this is a really good idea to check it at this point to make sure that the sides of the fence are square to a flat surface like the top of your table saw and here I'm checking that with the square that I can trust while I'm waiting for the glue to dry and the fence I can get the mounting brackets for the rail attached to the front of the saw and I made a simple gauge to help me locate it and once again I'm going to use a pin to hold it while I drill and drive a screw [Music] and now with the fence rail just sitting on the mounting bracket I can check that the fence is just above the surface of the saw there should be a little bit of a gap underneath it so it doesn't touch the top for the size of the fence I decided to use more of the same plastic that I use for the top of the table saw this stuff is really slippery and really durable but of course the original was firewood and that's always a perfectly fine option as well once again I've taken east from the original offense these are the shims that go on either side of the cam with that done everything is assembled all I need to do is get it lined up on the saw and there's not a whole lot to this what I do is I put one screw and the end of the fence rail and then line up the fence with the blade as close as I possibly can and then tighten the screw on the other end of the rail before doing a test cut and I made a video that goes into a little bit more detail on this there's a link to that in the description I'm moving the fence over tight to the blades so I can mark the zero location for the stick on tape that I'll be putting on next and the last step is to fasten the bearing block at the end of the fence and what this does is it holds that end of the fence up off the surface of the top as well so that it just rides on that plastic bearing so that's it like I said in the beginning there are plans available for this fence and there's a link to those in the description there are also links to the other videos that I made showing the original build and the original build article as well as the other detail video as I mentioned here [Music]

Channel: John Heisz - I Build It

Views: 1,344,351

Rating: 4.9136786 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, how to, diy, jpheisz, ibuildit, table saw fence, wooden tools, homemade table saw

Id: FIhMBYwm9E8

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 11 2019