BT3100 fence not travelling smoothly. Help please...

[dbhost]

Okay I have been dealing with a consistently dwindling travel smoothness on my fence to the point it is bugging me now. The fence used to travel along the rails nice and smooth, not motion is herky jerky, and hard to get set accurately without an undue amount of fiddling... Can somebody point me to some documentation on troubleshooting / adjusting and if need be rebuilding my BT3100 fence? When it worked well, it worked VERY well... I want to get it back to that point...

I suspect it has something to do with that roller thing on the back fence as the hesitation is at the rear of the fence, the front glides nicely still...

[Stytooner]

I would first start by cleaning both the front and rear surfaces.

[dbhost]

The rails are cleaned. I have wondered from time to time if they could benefit from waxing though...

For some reason something is telling me to look at the wheel on the rear clamper. Like I said the front glides free, it is the back that hangs... I am thinking either the clamper is out of adjustment, or the wheel itself isn't turning as freely as it should...

I did some digging / searching and found a lot of old posts, from around 2004-2006 and apparently there was a large number of folks with similar problems with their fence... The fix if the problem turns out to be the wheel itself, was as simply as lubricating the moving parts of the fence, where metal meets metal, with a dry lube... Worth trying for sure!

[dbhost]

Well, I un-buried the fence tonight and checked it out. The wheel thing in the clamper sticks as it turns... I have no dry lube at this time. I think I am going to muddle through until I get the shop mostly reassembled and then take care of this. I figure I will take some compressed air, clean the clamper assembly out, and dry lube that wheel / axle. Might have to disassemble thoroughly clean and lube that thing... It's irritating. But hopeful...

[LCHIEN]

probably the (plastic) wheel needs to be cleaned and lubed so that it rolls smoothly.

Don't wax your rails. In the past it has been discussed and has generally not been found to be a good idea. In particular, one complaint I recall was that on the front rail, it made it difficult to clamp the rip fence to the rail... lowering the handle makes plastic pads grip the sides of the rail, wax made the clamps slip and want to move upwards as you clamped. Use mineral spirits to clean off any wax you get on the rails.