Earl/Ben,
SMT gives you about 14" from the fence on SMT to the blade. If you are planning to use SMT for crosscuts and miter cuts on real wood (like making picture frames) - 14" is plenty. But if you are planning to use BT to cut sheet goods - 14" is a joke. Some people here modified their SMT - they drilled an extra hole for the fence pin and moved the fence to the back of the sliding table. This gives you something like 22" to the blade. In my opinion - this is not a worthy modification. You will be better off installing t-tracks on your saw and making a cross-cutting sled. With the sled you can easily cut 24" wide pieces of plywood.
My saw setup has similarities with Mark's setup (Black Walnut). I also have a full set of extended rails which gives me ability to place my rip fence 66" to the right of the blade. To be honest - I would not do that again if I were to redo my setup. For the table saw I don't really need extended rails. I do have T-slots on both sides of the blade and I have a good crosscutting sled riding in those T-slots, so I do use entire table surface to the right when I use the sled but rails I don't need to extend beyond 24" even though I have them. Similarly to Mark I also have a router table to the right of the saw - between the extended rails. My router table has its own fence and it does not attach to a rip fence on the saw, so I don't really use rail extensions for the router either. I don't regret making a large surface for the saw/router table but extending rails that far was unnecessary.
SMT gives you about 14" from the fence on SMT to the blade. If you are planning to use SMT for crosscuts and miter cuts on real wood (like making picture frames) - 14" is plenty. But if you are planning to use BT to cut sheet goods - 14" is a joke. Some people here modified their SMT - they drilled an extra hole for the fence pin and moved the fence to the back of the sliding table. This gives you something like 22" to the blade. In my opinion - this is not a worthy modification. You will be better off installing t-tracks on your saw and making a cross-cutting sled. With the sled you can easily cut 24" wide pieces of plywood.
My saw setup has similarities with Mark's setup (Black Walnut). I also have a full set of extended rails which gives me ability to place my rip fence 66" to the right of the blade. To be honest - I would not do that again if I were to redo my setup. For the table saw I don't really need extended rails. I do have T-slots on both sides of the blade and I have a good crosscutting sled riding in those T-slots, so I do use entire table surface to the right when I use the sled but rails I don't need to extend beyond 24" even though I have them. Similarly to Mark I also have a router table to the right of the saw - between the extended rails. My router table has its own fence and it does not attach to a rip fence on the saw, so I don't really use rail extensions for the router either. I don't regret making a large surface for the saw/router table but extending rails that far was unnecessary.
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