table saw fence

[stewart]

Can anyone give me advice about replacing the very flimsy fence that came with my very cheap bandq table saw some years ago. I've seen plans for portable work stations which have a space for a table saw like mine and they have a much more substantial fence with them than the thin aluminium i've got at present. can they be home made or is it better to go for a ready made one from someone like rutlands?
thanks for your help

 

[johnelliott]

A fence can be as simple as a batten of wood clamped at both ends to the table, up to the ready made types as sold by Rutlands. A number of questions
How important is it to be able to set a measurement quickly, and then change it to a different measurement?
How heavy, firmly fixed etc is the saw table itself, no point in having a firm fence if the whole table is going to move when you push against it?
Will you be cutting mostly sheet materials, or solid wood?
How accurate does it need to be?
If you can answer there questions then people here might be able to give some more useful info
John

 

[stewart]

How important is it to be able to set a measurement quickly, and then change it to a different measurement?

this would be fairly important - my fence at the moment has a measuring guage which isn't very accurate but gives a reasonable approximation when ripping. I've made a crosscut sled which has made this type of cutting much more accurate. I'd like to be able to have a fence I could set quickly for one measurement and change to another measurement without too much undoing of clamps, etc

How heavy, firmly fixed etc is the saw table itself, no point in having a firm fence if the whole table is going to move when you push against it?

At the moment the saw is on a set of not very heavy metal legs that came with it. It's also on a mobile base as the garage I work in is also home to 7 bicycles at the moment. Ideally I would like to put the saw in a larger work station that I could site permanently in the middle of the garage. I could then use the work station top to house a router table as well and share the fence.

Will you be cutting mostly sheet materials, or solid wood?

It will be a mixture of the two, but probably more solid wood than mdf as I have a large stack of thin oak strips about 2.5"x1.5"x9' that came from a wood recycling project - though it's taking me a long time to get them stuck together into usable sizes. the plan is to have all our shelving, beds and furniture made from this eventually.

How accurate does it need to be?

Again, ideally as accurate as possible.

Having looked at all my answers is the better answer to my question buy a better table saw??