Rip Fence Jig Guide
This idea isn't a new one at all. I have seen jigs that ride the rip fence before. The most recent and the one that put me into action was posted to the BT3 Central Forum by "Atilla the Hun." My thanks to him for the provocation. It was a bright yellow tenoning jig that looked very nice.
The idea behind this sled is to use one sled for several different BT3X specific jigs. There is no slop in this from side to side. What it does is take the already extremely accurate and solid rip fence of the Ryobi BT3X tablesaws and tranfers this capability to a lot of different jigs that you might want to use. For this particular jig, I used 5/8" (1.7cm) hard maple stock. It is very strong and works very well for jigs and such. Any hardwood should do good. Plywood would probably do well. I don't think that MDF would work as well for this type of design, because of the screws. I wantedto use the screws so that I could release the pressure on a perfect fit in order for it to slip with very little friction. You could use biscuits and glue, but you would really have to get lucky to get that perfect fit. I used coarse threaded drywall screws that were 1 1/2" long for the sled and 3/4" long for the UHMW. You could make a sled longer, but I think this is just about the optimal size for stability and friction concerns.
Here are the dimensions:
- 4 1/2" x 12" x 5/8" (11.9cm x 30.5cm x 1.7cm).
- 1 17/32" x 12" x 5/8" (4cm x 30.5cm x 1.7cm).
- 3" x 12" x 5/8" (7.6cm x 30.5cm x 1.7cm).
The UHMW is 3/8" (9.53mm) thick.
This thing really does work slick. It would not take very much time and effort to produce a guide like this one. It can really enhance the use of different jigs and improve the accuracy of your woodworking.
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