Tool gloat: UNISAW! #4: Now I'm on the fence.

The last couple of days I’ve been staring at the fence and all of it’s parts sitting on the garage floor waiting for some attention. This is a home made T-square type fence. It looks like someone tried to make a Biesemeyer on the cheap. The steel looks to be put together ok, on the surface at least, but it has no glide pads so it’s kind of hard to move it on the table. I decided that it will cost me about $40 in glide pads including shipping, and some elbow grease cleaning it up, so if I can end up with a good fence it will be worth it to try. I also have to get a new sacrificial face to mount to it. I’m thinking of using UHMW from Woodcraft http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/2000897/2580/UHMW-Sheet-14-Thick.aspx for the fence face.

I put only one light coat on for today. The sun was out and I think it got up to about 60 degrees today, so it wasn’t hot. I’ll wait at least ‘till tomorrow before putting on a second coat.

I used a razor blade, a wire brush and some 100 grit sandpaper to clean off all of the old adhesive and rust, then wiped it down and set it out in the sun so I could paint it. I have a can of appliance epoxy left over from when I restored a Stanley No.8 jointer plane several months ago. It’s a nice and hard finish, and it’s black.

With the fence curing it’s first coat of appliance epoxy, I pulled out the miter gauge and cleaned up the bar a little, and waxed it. It was in pretty good shape so I didn’t need to do much to it. Not sure how much I’ll really use it, I don’t have very good luck with miter gauges. It’s the original Rockwell gauge so I guess I’ll keep it.

In one of my replies on the last blog post, I talked about the motor cover and was complaining about how the screws didn’t want to come out. Well, I took another look at them today and ran the screws through a die, and ran a tap down in the ends of the standoffs. They cleaned up really good. Three of the standoffs are still screwed into the cabinet but I just don’t have the muscle to get the damn things out, so I just left them in and screwed the cover on. It tightened good, and comes off fine so I don’t think there should be any issues with it. Except for the numbers someone wrote on the back of the cover with a permanent marker, it looks o.k.

My weekend is over and I’ve got to go back to work tomorrow, so I should have the next post maybe on Sunday. My mobile base comes in on Thursday so that will make it easier to work on the saw as I’ll be able to pull it out, spin it around, and put it back when I’m done. Thanks for looking.

- Wayne

-- "I am endeavoring, ma'am, to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bear skins."