RogerS
Established Member
I was looking for a way to add a longer fence to my mitre-saw. Something that would give me accuracy and repeatability. It seemed to me a toss-up between going down the route of an aluminium extrusion with built-in scales etc. Maybe some Incra stuff? But then Incra scales are in inches and I'm metric. And it all seemed quite expensive particularly as I was after a long fence around 2m. So I decided to make my own when I saw the Perfect Stop from Axminster.
This is it in the Axminster catalogue. Looks quite neat, eh? No dimensions given that I could see on the Axminster site so I went ahead anyway. I was hoping for something fairly small...a bit like an Incra Shop Stop if you're familiar with that.
This is what I got.
A wellmade jig out of aluminium with two lenses at either end for reading the scale and two micro-adjustable stops. The knurled knob is on a screw thread and as you tighten it, the two halves slide together and clamp over your fence.
Still no idea of size, huh? Well, this may help!
That's a No 4 plane alongside and so, yes, the Perfect Stop is huge. It needs a fence about 6cm high by 5 cm wide. That's chunky.
How well does it work in practice? It does the business and clamps securely. I found the lenses distorted the image and weren't very clear. Lots of internal reflections but possibly that is down to bad lighting on my part but to give you some idea....
..sorry about the out of focus shot but it should give you some idea of what I'm talking about.
The picture also shows the downside to my homemade fence as the scale has to be put on upside down. In theory, the micro-adjusters can accomodate any minor variation due to changing blade thickness. I will create a standard known length of timber and use that to zero in whenever I change blade.
Finally here is the business end.
This is it in the Axminster catalogue. Looks quite neat, eh? No dimensions given that I could see on the Axminster site so I went ahead anyway. I was hoping for something fairly small...a bit like an Incra Shop Stop if you're familiar with that.
This is what I got.
A wellmade jig out of aluminium with two lenses at either end for reading the scale and two micro-adjustable stops. The knurled knob is on a screw thread and as you tighten it, the two halves slide together and clamp over your fence.
Still no idea of size, huh? Well, this may help!
That's a No 4 plane alongside and so, yes, the Perfect Stop is huge. It needs a fence about 6cm high by 5 cm wide. That's chunky.
How well does it work in practice? It does the business and clamps securely. I found the lenses distorted the image and weren't very clear. Lots of internal reflections but possibly that is down to bad lighting on my part but to give you some idea....
..sorry about the out of focus shot but it should give you some idea of what I'm talking about.
The picture also shows the downside to my homemade fence as the scale has to be put on upside down. In theory, the micro-adjusters can accomodate any minor variation due to changing blade thickness. I will create a standard known length of timber and use that to zero in whenever I change blade.
Finally here is the business end.
:wink:
