Shopsmith Forums

iclark wrote:let's see:
1) JoinTech knew about this problem for a couple of years
2) they billed my credit card for the full cost of the sawtrain when they shipped the bridge and router table in late February and then took almost another 4 weeks to ship the rest of it
3) now, 2 weeks later, JoinTech wants $116 to replace 2 clamps when the entire SawTrain 520 (without router table) costs $499

I don't think I'm very happy about this.

I bought my Sawtrain in December and have been using it. To date, I have not had a problem. BUT, I am with iclark on principle. Seems to me that they should have asked about which type rails I had and/or disclosed what was a known issue with the newer front fence rails.

I can certainly see why both of you are not happy about this development.

However, I surmise both of your comments are based on the fact that Ed informed them of the issue (I won't call it a problem any more since Ed said he has not experienced any slipping in his setup) a couple of years ago. But it may be he talked with someone who left the company back when they were having problems (death of the owner, & other issues mentioned by Ed). Several people were laid off during that period and they were a small company to start with.

My conversations with the current owner were such that I believe he did not know of the issue until I brought it up. All I can tell you is that these people are good honest folks and in my dealings with them over many years they have always treated me right.

Regretably, that information doesn't make your situation any better. The one good thing I see here is that you aren't having movement of your setup once you clamp it down unlike what I was experiencing.

Hi Rob,

I have tested the new MODIFIED clamps for the Jointech on the magnetic rails for the 520 and they work well. I have been working with Ernest on the modification and he made three prototypes - the last one being the production model. I have that one on my machine and it works well.

You MUST set up the rails on the tables precisely for the system to work properly. If the rails are not perfectly aligned (from the top of the tables) there may be some binding in how the Jointech fence slides. You also must have all the tables (main, extension, floating) properly aligned to each other - the top of all tables must be the same height and in the same plane.

One thing we discovered is that in some cases (at least one that I know of) the bottom of the white plastic part that slides on the front rails might need to be sanded off slightly to get a perfect alignment. This seems to be peculiar to each machine. One of the machines I tried it on needed no adjustment while for the other I had to sand 1/16" off the BOTTOM part of the white plastic. After the sanding was done the new clamps worked fine on BOTH machines.

Just for clarification the BOTTOM of the white plastic part refers to the location where the Phillips head of the screw is visible on the bottom of the clamp.

It's difficult to describe in words so if you have further questions let me know. I'll try to clarify anything you can't decipher from my ramblings above.