Modifying Craftsman router fence

[dlminehart]

Anyone familiar with the Craftsman router fence that went on clearance sale a couple years ago? It was designed to work with the Craftsman router table, that had grooves in which the fence could slide towards and away from the router.

Well, I'm planning to add a router table to my Craftsman table saw (22114), but had no plans to groove it for the fence. Any suggestions for how I might remove the protrusions from the bottom of the fence, so I can simply attach it to my table saw fence for lateral movement? Or am I stuck with having to groove my home-built table top?

[DonHo]

I have that fence but I don't remember for sure but I think the parts you are refering to are only to mount/secure the fence to the table. Would it be possible to just leave those two parts off the fence. You might be able to secure the fence to a piece of MDF or plywood and then use the Rockler universal fence clamps to secure it to your rip fence.
http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?p...&filter=clamps

DonHo

[jwaterdawg]

If you want to be able to use the dust port on the craftsman fence you're probably gonna have to engineer your own attachment for the rip fence. If you can deal with no dust collection from above (not recommended) the brackets from rockler will work. Come to think of it if you remove the endcaps from the Craftsman fence you could probably hook a dust hookup directly to the end of the fence (it is hollow extruded aluminum). This is similar to how the dust collection for the Incra wonderfence works.

If you decide to groove/track your own table you can obviously manufacture some fence brackets. Here's a few pics of what I came up with in a similar fashion:

J

[dlminehart]

J, did you make the table top, or is that from Craftsman? If you made it, where'd you get the appropriately sized metal inserts with measuring tapes? I see what you mean about the dust collection interfering with the connection to table saw fence, but don't think it would be too difficult to engineer an attachment.

[jtrcy]

I had that fence - why not just grind the protrusions off the angle brackets to allow the fence to be mounted flush to the top?

JT

[jwaterdawg]

J, did you make the table top, or is that from Craftsman? If you made it, where'd you get the appropriately sized metal inserts with measuring tapes? I see what you mean about the dust collection interfering with the connection to table saw fence, but don't think it would be too difficult to engineer an attachment.

I made the table top. A piece of melamine covered particle board laminated to 3/4 ply underneath. The router plate is a plunge lift from Woodpeckers and the t-track is Incra track plus purchased at Woodcraft. The measuring inserts came with the track. To be honest I only use the measuring inserts for gross measurements. Regular t-track (Incra, Rockler, etc.) would work just as well. I still think having the dust collection come through the "inside" of the extruded aluminum would be ideal and would simply attaching the CM fence to a TS fence. Just my $0.02.

[dlminehart]

To do the dust collection through the fence itself, would you have suction at both ends, or leave one end capped and just suck through the other? I suppose I could try one end, and only do two if it seemed necessary. I'm not sure how I'd substitute a hose adapter for the end cap. I believe the cap now has a couple holes for screws into the fence, but using those would likely get in the way of what is already a limited airway. I'll have to give it some thought, and maybe google around to see how others have done it (e.g., Incra's fence).

[dlminehart]

JT, I've thought of grinding . . . but have no grinder! One of the few things I don't seem to have gotten around to picking up.

[jwaterdawg]

I think dust collection on one end would be sufficient. Dust collection from above only works well with edge forming anyway so the I suspect one side would be fine. The more I think about it, the more I want to try it too! Then I could use the positioning prowess of my Incra rails on the router station.

I suspect one limitation of this setup will be care to not chew up the TS fence if you are swinging a bit bit (e.g. panel raising). Let me know what you come up with, I'm gonna experiment too.

J

[rcp612]

I have that fence bought at a Sears closeout. The adapters to hold it straight on the Craftsman table were additional pieces on mine. I simply left them off during assembly and re drilled the holes in the angles to 5/16" to make a stronger hold down to my t-track.
The adapters had a second pin?(bump) to align them to the angles but they only keep the fence straight to the original table's slotted mounting. I didn't worry about straight since I don't see that as a concern on a router table. If you need "straight", what is it straight to? I can align mine to the miter slot if neccesary very easily, and have, although I have no idea why I did that.

[jwaterdawg]

There's not a need for a specific straight line reference on a router table. I think the OP was investigating a way to lock a router fence to the table using the positioning capabilities of the TS fence. Obviously if you use t-track to mount a fence, the tracks do need to be parallel to one another, but not necessarily parallel to the table edges.

[dlminehart]

I've ordered the fence supports from Sears, using the product number for the version rcp612 describes, where the "bumps" were attached by bolts to the bottom of the fence support. Mine came with the "bumps" cast into the support. When I ordered the part, it said something about "looks different but functions the same" . . . so I suspect I may get 2 more new-style supports with integral bumps. But they were cheap enough I decided to risk it, and give me some expendible spares to use in grinding if it comes to that.

[greencat]

Please keep us updated - I'm in the same boat. Maybe I will grind then drill a hole to attach it to a t-track. I need to redo my table top since its not flat.

[jwaterdawg]

I suspect you will receive the same integral "bumps" in the parts you ordered. The older parts where the "bumps" where removable are obsolete. When this came up before, I remember a member here ordered parts and received exactly that. I think the best bet is to grind them off, or make your own. Making a couple is easy enough to do out of wood, or would probably be fairly cheap for a local machine shop to manufacture out of steel.

J