Table Saw mods.

Sawdust Sam · 28 Jul 2017

So I've had a Fox table saw for years, it's a cheapo but I thought I'd see what I can make of it with a view to deciding if I want to buy anything better in future.

First up I changed the blade to a Freud 40T and fixed up the internal dust extraction shoot on the bottom of the blade, good old epoxy glue.

I set the blade up so it's parallel with slots.

The fence was absolutely useless so I added a new one from Axminster, easy to fit drilling and tapping a couple of holes in the front edge of the base. The mitre slots are really small and the mitre gauge is an ill fitting Ali disaster, so I'm now half way through version two of a cross cut sled.

I've also modified the outfeed table by lowering it a little and adding an oversized plywood table complete with dados to add additional support to the sled and preventing it toppling of the back.

Next up I've mounted an old 1/4 inch router under the rhs of the table and made a router fence with plywood attached to the TS fence.

Still have more to do, I bought a nearly new scissor jack for £5 off Amazon and intend to use that as a router lift with the help of some heavy duty brackets and other bits and bobs as seen in the photo. I've also got an NV R switch which I'll mount next for the router.
I've also got the bits to modify the extraction on the table saw. Currently it just goes to the underneath of the blade sout but I'll split that and fit a hopper to the base of the saw. Above the table the 63mm hose which connects to my main extraction ducting can be easily swapped from the router to the table saw crown guard.

I also fitted a base that the vac sits on and also lockable castors so I can move it around as required in my small space.

Do I need a mitre slot on the router table ? I think I can modify the rhs extending table to accommodate one if it's a neccessity.

It may not be the best but I've really enjoyed putting it all together. Comments and suggestions most welcome.

marcros · 29 Jul 2017

already looking 100x better than in was before.

Eric The Viking · 29 Jul 2017

Sooner or later you will want to shape end grain on the router. It might be tenon cheeks, or housings or scribed mouldings for frame and panel doors, or locking corners for drawers and boxes. At that point you will be frustrated by not being able to use a mitre fence.

But all is not lost: you have options.

1. Fix the mitre fence system on the saw and use that. Steve Maskery recommends using a centre punch to make lumps on (only!) one side of the fence rail - the part that runs in the slot - to take out the slop. It works!

Bear in mind that, when using a mitre fence designed for the saw slots, you will need to work (i.e lean) right across the saw table from the opposite side to where the router is mounted, to be safe and making sure you are not climb cutting (always feed right to left across the cutter, with the fence on the far side of it). Also, never trap the stock between the cutter and the fence, irrespective of the direction you work it!

Assuming that's not too far to stretch, it seems the easieast approach. Any fixed fence you need at the same time as the mitre fence will need to be on the outside edge of the saw table, i.e. the opposite way round to the way your nice, home-made, extraction fence is fitted.

When you use a fixed fence along with a mitre fence, it's often only to help alignment - complex moulding/scribing cutters almost always have guide bearings that control the actual depth of cut, but... simple ones such as ogee and chamfer cutters, and mitre and drawer lock cutters, often don't. For those you will probably also need a zero-clearance sacrificial fence on the front of the fixed fence, as you rely on the fixed fence to control depth of cut. If you're doing the drawer/box corner type of moulding, you also really need a tall, sacrificial fence to get the shape cut perfectly.

2. Run a mitre fence against the edge of the saw table (the narrow side, which faces you in the configuration you've photographed). Unlike using the saw blade, the edge of the table doesn't need to align in any special way as long as it's straight and smooth - the line of it will always be tangential to the circle of the cutter. It does mean, though, that you will need to apply pressure to keep the mitre fence from juddering as the stock passes the cutter. This is one extra thing to worry about, and may turn out to be a nuisance. Taking multiple shallow cuts will minimise the problem.

As a variant on this you could run a cross-cutting sled against your long fence. This ought to work well, and there are commercial designs that use the same idea. Again, you need to stop it vibrating as you cut, so arrange good clamping for the workpiece, letting you concentrate on moving the sled with fleshy bits well away from the cutter. I've just been given a really nice one by a friend who borrowed a rail+stile cutter and returned it with the sled he'd made (thank you Steve!).

3. Make a sled, which slides over the top of the cutter, and has a slot for the cutter to protrude in. You can keep it located by running pegs or a batten in one of the table saw slots, or have a big one that hooks over both edges of the whole saw table. This is great for things like doing slots and box joints (when it functions as a jig), but there are safety considerations as the cutter is usually unguarded and you're sliding the system to and fro over it. It also has a finite thickness, so you may find difficulty using cutters with shorter shanks, and find you need a collet extension. And obviously you can't easily use a fixed fence with it, although you can use things like stop blocks on your sled to position the work.

You could, however, get the vertical-stock part of moulding drawer and box corners to work really well, by using a sled with a vertical "fence" built onto it, and clamping to that*. I'm not sure it would work too well for aligning horizontal stock for end-grain milling. The issue with stop blocks on the "mitre fence" (at right angles to the direction of movement) is that you can only reference the "wrong" end of the stock to them. That's OK on a table saw, when you are usually trimming a lot of different pieces to the same dimension, but when you are moulding with a router cutter, the length of the stock changes subtly. For boxes to be square, there is an advantage for the second end of the stock, in that both sides have to end up at identical length, but it's also not ideal as the finished dimension is hard to set - you get what you get.

So I find sleds good, but for only limited applications.

Hope that all makes sense, and helps a bit. You certainly can use your setup for almost all the normal router table tasks, but you'll be swapping sides (i.e. where you stand) depending on the operation you're doing, and possibly reaching a bit further than you would on a dedicated table, although not by much.

E.

*That would need the fence to be either laterally adjustable, or the entire thing to be made to 0.2mm accuracy (probably). You could do it, but it would be jolly fiddly to set up. It's a similar problem to cutting box joints: Steve M. (again!) has a good YouTube video on doing box joints, with a micro-adjustable jig (which is necessary if you want them to fit well!), and you'd need to make a fence that was similarly micro-adjustable, but with the additional problem that it would have to stay perfectly parallel with the direction of movement - not so easy!

Sawdust Sam · 29 Jul 2017

Thanks for the comprehensive feedback Eric, I had to read it a few times to get my head round it all.

The problem I see with option 1, mitre gauge aside, is that there's so little room on the other side of the router cutter for a fence, in fact the RIP fence won't work bare on that side of the cutter at the RHS bearing of the RIP fence would fall off the rail.

Option 2 was nearer what I was planning although again I think the mitre rail fixed to the table edge may be too close to the cutter, is there a minimum safe distance ? I was wondering if I could fix the mitre rail to the blue extension wing in front of the router fence rather than the fixed table side edge. The t track I bought is the perfect height to sit on those round support rails at 9.5mm deep but the mitre track is 13.5 mm deep so I'd have to bring a flat in the round bars to accommodate this extra depth. I could then add additional wooden support under the track if necessary and fix the track to the flats, the side of the blue panel and or thee additional supports.

Any pics of your sled ?

Sawdust Sam · 29 Jul 2017

A few mods today :-

I fitted the NVR switch linking its output to a flush mount socket for the router.
Also fitted the the 100mm extraction hood connector to the base of the saw.
And some featherboards arrived.

Next job will be the router lift courtesy of a scissor jack.

Bottom off and breaking into the wiring.

Flush mount socket

Wiring supply all done and made good.

Nvr cut out, installed and output wired to flush mount socket

NVR

Dust cowl fitted to base, marked and cut out

And base refitted.

Kreg Featherboards.