Looking for Miter Fence Parts

[crokett]

It's been a very long time since I've been here. A lot has happened including me rehoming my BT3000 for several years. It recently returned to me. The quick stop for the miter bar is broken and the miter indicator is missing. The rest of the saw is in good shape and it still runs fine. That's not bad for almost 20 years old. The miter indicator is the bigger problem. I can find the quickstop online for 14.00 plus shipping. I'm hoping someone here has one available cheaper than that. I can't find the miter indicator, but I can probably manufacture one out of aluminum. It would help to have a picture of the existing one set to 0. I don't remember if 0 is the indicator at the edge of the 0 mark or cutting it in half.

[aiyou]

I can help you out - have both. Sending you a private message

[LCHIEN]

I hope the pictures attached will help. I could live w/o the quick stop. But the miter indicator seems really useful. Some pictures have a ruler to help gauge how far out the tab sticks. Looks like you could make something that fits the large track on the back side of the fence and can be screwed to clamp it or loosened to slide and have the tab out the bottom/back side.

Good luck.

[dell2394]

It's been a very long time since I've been here. A lot has happened including me rehoming my BT3000 for several years. It recently returned to me. The quick stop for the miter bar is broken and the miter indicator is missing. The rest of the saw is in good shape and it still runs fine. That's not bad for almost 20 years old. The miter indicator is the bigger problem. I can find the quickstop online for 14.00 plus shipping. I'm hoping someone here has one available cheaper than that. I can't find the miter indicator, but I can probably manufacture one out of aluminum. It would help to have a picture of the existing one set to 0. I don't remember if 0 is the indicator at the edge of the 0 mark or cutting it in half.

Hi there Crockett,

Did you find a replacement Miter Pointer? I just picked up a 3100 and am looking for one. I can’t find one anywhere and don’t want to buy a whole new miter fence to get one.


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[LCHIEN]

See this post

https://www.sawdustzone.org/forum/discussions/bt3x00-related-discussions/841575-loring-s-easy-miter-indicator-pointer-replacement

[dell2394]

Thank you for the reply, LCHIEN. Unfortunately, I don’t have the means to make an accurate representation like you did. I have no way of drilling and tapping the aluminum. I can always measure the angle through other means, I’m sure. Thank you for the detailed write-up. The piece looks like it functions great!


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[cwsmith]

Well actually this should be pretty easy to make just out of some wood scraps. After reading that you have no means to cut, tap, and thread a piece of aluminum you could just make it from strips of wood.

I went out and grabbed my SMT fence and a couple of slivers from the scrap box. Found one that was thin enough to fit that inside channel (1/8 - inch) thick x 1.04 width x 3/4 (not critical). Glue to that a second piece about 3/32 - inch thick and the same width as the first piece and on top of that glue a piece that is 0.323 thick. You would now have a pointer that is the right dimension, no metal to deal with and it will slide into the end of the channel and can be moved along the fence as needed. Just glued up wood strips, but there is really no stress put on it that should cause it to break.

I'll make a drawing later tonight and add it here.

CWS

[dell2394]

CWSMITH,

Thank you so much for looking into this! I really appreciate it. I’ll give it a shot, for sure!


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[LCHIEN]

Well actually this should be pretty easy to make just out of some wood scraps. After reading that you have no means to cut, tap, and thread a piece of aluminum you could just make it from strips of wood.

I went out and grabbed my SMT fence and a couple of slivers from the scrap box. Found one that was thin enough to fit that inside channel (1/8 - inch) thick x 1.04 width x 3/4 (not critical). Glue to that a second piece about 3/32 - inch thick and the same width as the first piece and on top of that glue a piece that is 0.323 thick. You would now have a pointer that is the right dimension, no metal to deal with and it will slide into the end of the channel and can be moved along the fence as needed. Just glued up wood strips, but there is really no stress put on it that should cause it to break.

I'll make a drawing later tonight and add it here.

CWS

Don't mean to be a trouble maker, but, unless the third piece you call .323 thick is pulled tightly against the face of the fence it will be a poor reference to the angle marker because of the back and forth slop.
If you can't make a metal piece then you have to make a wood piece thick enough from your part 1 and 2 to hold a few threads of a small wood screw needed to pull the third piece flush against the fence.
I measured the lip at 0.105" thick so your second piece glued to the part in the track has got to be less than 0.100" thick. to be able to pull the third indicator piece flush against the face

And it can't all be one piece.

[cwsmith]

Thanks Loring,

Never worry about calling it the way it is. What I think is a decent idea may well prove not to be.

So instead of spending any time drawing something, I just decided to cut and glue some scraps together to see if my idea would even come close to working. This would be pretty crude, so let's just call it what it is, a quick and dirty prototype.

It was too cold to go out to the shed and I figured the time it would take me for this simple piece wasn't worth igniting the heater. So, I took some 3/4 edge cuts that I had in my scrap barrel, found a piece that would fit the fence slot and cut it to snugly fit vertically in the slot. I had to do a little sanding to get it to fit and still slide along the length of the channel.

Second step was to fit a piece in the open area of the channel to bring it up level with the face. None of the scraps was thin enough, so I grabbed a Popsicle stick (yep, that's what it was) and found it was almost the thickness I needed, but not quite. So, I cut a small square from a cardboard product package, glued it to the 1st piece as it sat in the slot. Then I cut the Popsicle stick to make two 3/4 long strips and glued those on top of the card board. That brought the piece up level with the face.

Third step, I found another 3/4 wide scrap that was just slightly thicker than I needed. I cut it to a length that was slightly less than the height of the miter fence and then glued it to the assembly that was still in the channel. I adjusted it so that it came down even with the OEM indicator. A few minutes later the glue had set enough for me to move.

At this point I took a few picture and moved it back and forth in the channel. Like your initial wood indicator, mine too was just a bit too thick and I took a file and beveled the bottom edge.

So, about that concern where a screw is necessary to clamp the indicator to the front of the fence. I'll have to go to the shed and place the fence on my BT and do some checking. Right now, there is very little slop. The indicator slides okay and with a feeler gauge I can snuggly fit 0.003 behind it. I'm not sure really how much that would throw an angle setting off.

I don't do a lot of angle cutting on the table saw, mostly 90-degree cross cuts and for that there's the flip-up stop. If the .003 is too much, I can simply slide the indicator out and stick some tape behind it and hopefully that won't be thick enough to cause the indicator not to slide.

Bottom line, I did this in my basement work area, cutting the scraps to length with my X-acto razor saw and used some sandpaper over which I slid the small pieces. It took about a half-hour and as mentioned there's very little play. Placing them side by side on the fence, the wood indictor is very close to the OEM one, with the only real difference being my quick sanding of the bevel. Overall, if I had been making a 'final' I would have tried to be more precise.

So Dell, this isn't pretty as nothings sanded or fitted well, as I said, a quick and dirty prototype. It was minimal work with minimal tools. I think it might work and I'll attempt to check the accuracy tomorrow.

Please feel free to critique.

CWS

[LCHIEN]

I think if, as you did, fine tuning the meat of the sandwich might make it close enough so there's no slop in the indicator.
Perhaps making the meat a flexible material with a little give and a tiny bit thinner than the lip could actually make a pointer with a little stay in place power but easily slidable and no slop.

Good job. There's almost nothing that can't be improved on.

[cwsmith]

The two things a don't like about it (beyond it's being just crude) is that I put too much of a bevel on it and it falls short of the marking. The second is that it casts a shadow across the table mark. So I'll do it again.

On the plus side, there is no slop, there's only 0.003 play and anything less than that might restrict it's ability to slide, but I'll find some time tomorrow to play some more.

The one problem that I had though was that the miter fence from my BTS 21 is not exactly the same as the one on my BT3100. Looks like the same extrusion, and since it was loose on the shelf, that's what I grabbed to make the prototype. So I went to the shed this morning and the wood indicator would not fit on the BT3100 SMT fence and therefore I needed to do some sanding to make the insert shorter. For a quick test I just used the shorter miter fence (BTS21). Checked it at 90- and 45-degrees and it worked fine. I have a precision stainless steel triangle to check the angles between the blade and the fence and they are precise, bearing in mind that the wood indicator falls just to the left of the marking because I sanded a bit too much on the bevel.

Thinking further, instead of making this a 3-piece hack job, I could well just use a piece that equals the total thickness from the bottom of the channel to the top surface of the fence, and then use the router table to machine off the edges so it fits the channel. Then just glue the top, marker piece, on to that. The one thing I noticed with your design was that you've slotted the marker so it appears vertically adjustable, while my copy is fixed, because I've glued it. I'll have to think about that.

CWS

[dell2394]

I appreciate you guys thinking this through with such detail. I just bought this saw from a guy who appears not to have taken the best care of it. He cut into the SMT twice, lost the knob to lock the miter fence, and broke the original indicator.

I planned to measure the angle of the fence to the blade before locking in an angle before making a cut anyway, but now I’m curious: with the original miter pointer in place, how accurate are the cut angles?


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[LCHIEN]

Those knobs are nothing special, I think offhand its either 5/16-18 knob commonly available in hardware stores like ACE.
The bolt is just an ordinary 5/16-18 hex bolt.

As for the angle presumably if the SMT is adjusted parallel to the blade it should be just about right on. The pivot and the scale are cast into the same piece of aluminum. The miter angle scale is quite a large diameter allowing a very precise adjustment.

And you do know about the zero stop adjustment with the eccentric screw?

When I got my saw 20 years ago the SMT was adjusted properly and The angle was quite close I use for most angle cuts without further tweaking, Only if doing frames where the four corners will have to meet do I go to extra length to try and put it against a drafting square.

[cwsmith]

The same was true of my BT3100 which I bought in 2005 on clearance. No adjustments were necessary. This was my first table saw and I really appreciated its design. A year or so later I bought the BTS21 with it's folding and mobile stand. Significantly different in design, but it too had an SMT which by that time had become a desired feature from my experience with the BT3100.

CWS