Long miter fence

[LCHIEN]

I did order the extrusion and upgraded my miter fence a bit longer than Original length. The extrusion is a piece of reclaimed Rip fence extrusion, the same extrusion used for the miter fences, but some 23 inches long.

Once I got it I decided to use the Rod Kirby miter fence parts I have had for "safekeeping" a gift from Rod when he retired his BT3000.
Here is the result:




And here is the original (with miter clamp) compared to the long, Rod Kirbyized.

Rod's parts were milled to perfection and fit quite precisely some 15 or 20 years later.

And See, I still have my miter fence ends intact!

[jlhumbert]

Nice, I like the ends. It's cool that you'll be able to switch back to the short fence in a sec when needed.

[d_meister]

The longer miter fence is especially desirable when the dual miter slot accessory is mounted.. The longer fence is more "balanced" in that it's more centered over the width of the sliding table, then. The downside to the long miter is that it's a lot easier to put the fence into the blade path, but it becomes second nature after a couple of nicks..
I bought the original accessory long rip or miter fence, and found it too long and unbalanced in the true sense, in that it had way too much unsupported mass hanging off the left side, even tipping the sliding table if it wasn't securely enough locked in place. That thing is maybe twice as long as the fence Loring just bought. Mine is now permanently mounted to the original rip fence. It really helps to have extra rip fence for squaring up on the leading end of the rip fence.

[GrumpyDad]

"Mine is now permanently mounted to the original rip fence" - Would like to see a picture of that if you could

[LCHIEN]

Here's what I do when needing a long rip fence... clamp a 4-foot level to the rip fence. I use the usual hole in the level to clamp it to the existing rip fence.

[d_meister]

Long miter rip accessory shown mounted on the original rip fence. The black things are threaded anchors from T-nuts.com back in the day. I use them to mount
a high fence jig with a miter slot in it to fit a fingerboard to press downward to keep Formica and 1/8" plywood from climbing over the blade. I often do acrylics,
and the extra lead in on the fence makes sure the cut begins clean.
.

[NovaWoodworker]

All these years and I never noticed that the rip fence and miter fence had the same profile. I have wondered a few times why the back side of the rip fence was a bit oddly shaped. Sometimes it does not have enough flat face when using the rip fence with my router mounted to the right.

[LCHIEN]

Clever engineering economy trick. Make parts do dual purpose when possible. One design, two birds killed. In this case one custom extrusion instead of two, just cut to different lengths.

[LCHIEN]

Clever engineering economy trick. Use one design in two places. One extrusion design does the job of two, one stocked raw extrusion cut to desired length.

[nicer20]

Aha ! Never noticed that either. Makes perfect engineering sense from production point of view.