Shopsmith Forums

I was curious about adaptations beyond JessEm and Power Feed devices that others have used on Shopsmith.

I had a set of Board Buddies as shown here mounted on my RAS. I have a set for either direction for the RAS since you can have blade in or out.

I have ordered a rall that should attach to my Shopsmith fence allowing me to use them more readily. They worked well on tge RAS and I had mounted them on wood which I clamped to Shopsmith fence.

The JessEm router guides are awesome on my router table and I thought someone here adapted a router set to a Shopsmith fence, but haven’t located the post.

Everett

I have used Board Buddies on my Shopsmith table saw for years and prefer them to the newer JessEm guides. I use the JessEm guides on my router table but I like the longer reach and heft of the Board Buddies for the table saw. I did make a hardwood attachment for the Shopsmith fence with a T-Track in it to attach the JessEm guides met for use on a router table but their performance was not as good as the Board Buddies unless you are cutting fairly narrow strips. JessEm also makes guides specifically designed for use on the table saw that have a longer adjustable reach and probably work better.

Everett, here's a post where I used Jessem router guides on my 520 fence for a rotary-planing operation.

viewtopic.php?p=249315#p249315

The main functional differences between the JessEm Router and TS guides:

The TS guide downward force is set by a pretty stiff spring. This allows the guide to ride up and down if the thickness of the stock varies while maintaining roughly the same force. In contrast, it would not be easy to set the router guides with as much force. The router guide has little ability to manage variation in stock thickness.

The TS guides can be adjusted out away from the fence while the router guides mount a fixed distance and are close to the fence.

There are definitely uses for the router guides on the SS fence. Personally, I don't think table saw anti-kickback is among those uses. Though I can see benefit in using them in some cases, I wouldn't look at them as an alternative anti-kickback solution. Perhaps 'supplemental' as opposed to alternative.

- David

I was all ways told there are more than one way to do everything , I believe those would work in many situations as described and any safety precaution IMO is money well spent . IMO a feather board is still pretty tough to beat .

Hobbyman2 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 12, 2021 7:53 am I was all ways told there are more than one way to do everything , I believe those would work in many situations as described and any safety precaution IMO is money well spent . IMO a feather board is still pretty tough to beat .

When I first installed the TS stock guides, my first thought was that it was a lot like using both table-mounted and fence-mounted featherboards together for holding the stock down against the table and laterally against the fence. There are a couple of big differences. One is that the stock guides provide both forces on the outfeed side of the blade, normally not possible with a featherboard. The other is that they have a much better grip on the wood and seem to provide a much better anti-reverse function while adding little resistance in the intended feed direction.

- David

sounds good , keep in mind a properly set up feather board sets behind or even with the first point of contact with blade on the infeed side not against or past the blade same with the feather board on the fence , a second feather board can be used mounted to the fence on the out feed side providing some downward pressure and preventing kick back . this set up will work very well when cutting narrow pieces .