Square fence on sled?

Piece of cake, but you need a few tools (unless you have them already).

Place a dial indicator w/ a magnetic base on your table saw fence or Table saw surface (I assume you have a metallic fence). I like to use the table saw fence because I can lock the dial indicator on the TS-fence and move it into the square.

Here is a picture of one you can buy from Woodcraft:

Temporarily secure the sled fence to the sled. Next, place a good quality square against your sled fence and zero the indicator at the top of the square. Now slide the sled forward and take an indicator reading at the bottom of the square. If you don’t read zero at your second measurment, you are not square. Adjust the sled fence and re-measure.

You can also rip pieces of plywood and measure with a caliper the two ends of the strip you rip off. This method is less accurate, wastes plywood and takes longer.

Let me know if this is not clear and I can take a few pictures.

You can also buy a TS-Aligner Jr (See my review in Reviews) and do the same thing (only this time you will need to secure the Aligner to your TS since it has no magnetic base.)

-- -Brian of High Point, NC (http://www.garagewoodworks.com)

Ok. I snapped a couple of pictures of the process with a dial indicator with magnetic base.

Take a measurement at the top:

Then take a measurement at the bottom of the square:

If your second measurement isn’t zero, move the fence and re-measure. You will be ‘dead-on’ square.

-- -Brian of High Point, NC (http://www.garagewoodworks.com)

niki has some great ideas on this too http://lumberjocks.com/topics/2987

-- Fred, Springfield, Ma

If you don’t want to fork out the cash for a dial indicator then there is always the 5 cut method. I found a post about it here I did mine this way and it’s pretty dead on. Basically you put a screw on one end of the fence and clamp the other so that it’s not permenantly set. Then you trim away the four sides of a square board. This exagerrates how far you are off by four making it easier to see a very small misallignment. Make your adjustments, check again until you are happy, and secure your fence. Good luck with it.