Ratchet Wheels for Tablesaw

[Edgar Svendsen]

I had a kickback incident recently, I was lucky enough to have a minor injury but almost a severe one. I found some gizmos at a garage sale that attach to a tablesaw fence and hold the work flat and against the fence while the ratcheted wheel helps prevent kickback. I put them on my fence but I'm bewildered by the best way to use them.

They seem OK for good-sized sheet stock and fair-sized pieces of lumber. But for narrow pieces (less then 3 or 4 inches wide) it seems very hard to feed the stock, the gizmos always seem to be in the way of any push block or push stick or whatever. It's just these kind of narrow pieces that caused my injury, I've never had a problem with bigger stock. Maybe it's a failure of ingenuity.

Has anyone found a way to feed narrow stock and still use the wheel gizmos?

Ed

[Morris Dovey]

Ed...

You might try the same approach I take to using featherboards on my TS: feed a (smaller) piece of scrap right behind the board being ripped.

[Upscale]

It sounds like you have a set of board buddies.

They seem OK for good-sized sheet stock and fair-sized pieces of lumber.

For wood cuts that fall inside the working edge of the board buddies, you'd likely need a feather board. The can be used to hold stock down and another set can be used to hold stock against the fence You can find all sorts of information on them by searching for these two words, "feather board".

[B a r r y]

Figuring out why the kick back occurred is also a good idea to prevent it from happening again.

What exactly were you doing when it happened?

Barry

[bridger]

another handy stock control device for ripping small stuff is a spring board.

[Upscale]

No familiar with that term. Can you point me to a website? I did a google search and came up empty.

[bridger]

it's a holddown device generally made up from scrap on hand to suit the process at hand. take a scrap of something a little longer than the part of your blade that is above the table and about as wide as the fence is high. the extra length is for clamps, so give yourself 6 or 8 inches. cut off 2 corners at a shallow angle such that that (long) edge begins to approximate a gentle curve. now rip a bit off of a scrap of some springy hardwood- birch, oak and ash all work fine. fasten this to the 2 bevels on the body so that it stands proud at the center of the body. sand smooth and wax the exposed edge of the hardwood ripping. clamp it to the fence with the spring down at a height that applies the needed pressure to the stock.

this works well for router table applications as well as table saw. it is different in use from a featherboard in that it is s bit smoother travelling and does not resist kickback.

how long the whole thing is, how long and steep the corner cuts are, how thick and wide the spring is and how much downward pressure you set it up to apply are all variables. they are free and quick to make, so feel free to play with the configuration until you have something that works for you.

I'll post pictures over on ABPW