 I recently built this miter saw station, more on that in a minute, but one of the features that I included on this miter saw station is a stop block, and that allows me to make a measurement for a part that I want to cut, as well as making the same cut over and over very accurately. Now a lot of people typically use an aluminum t-track routed into the surface or into the fence to make a stop block system, but I'm going to show you an alternative that I did, which just is made completely out of wood, relying on basically a gap in the work surface, and then a stop block that rides along in that track. And with a tightening knob, you can lock it into place anywhere along the length, giving you a place to make repeatable cuts. And since my tape measure runs out at 15 inches right next to the saw, I also added an extension arm, which extends my reach all the way down to 7 inches. And typically anything smaller than that I like to cut on the table saw because it's a little more safe. The slot that the stop block rides in is built right into the work surface. As you can see, my tabletop is broken up into two pieces with a three-quarter inch gap in between. The two work surfaces have been edge banded in solid wood, and this back one I put in an extra wide piece of solid edge banding and cut a shallow rabbit in this portion of it, and that made a place for the self-adhesive tape measure to go, and that way you can use that to set the stop block to whatever dimension that you want. So let me show you how I made it. Not much plywood is needed on this project, so I used some nice half-inch Baltic birch to cut out the few pieces. Even though there's only a couple of rip cuts, I still use my overhead dust collection every time I can because it does such a good job at collecting that dust, and when I don't use it I can really tell. The first part to get worked on is this clamping block, which just goes on the end of the stop block and provides the clamping force to hold the block in place. There's two pre-drills for screws that attach it to the main stop block, and then a larger through hole, which will be for a T-nut that will get pressed in. The flange on the T-nut is actually a little bit too big, so I'll cut that off with the angle grinder. Here you can see how the T-nut goes into place, and how the flat spot actually doubles as a way to keep the T-nut from spinning. The next part I'm making is the wooden spring and rub plate. Because it's such a small part, I'm actually cutting the features of the part into this larger piece of wood, and then cutting the part out itself. That way I can have the larger piece of wood to hold onto, and not have to have such a tiny little piece to work with. The wooden spring is going to get a metal rub plate attached to it, so that it will last longer as the threaded knob screws on and off of this wooden spring. To glue it in place, I'm first going to scuff up the back of the rub plate to give it some mechanical grip. And then I'm going to use hot glue to attach the metal plate to the wooden spring. And the key to using hot melt here is to heat up both parts, so that when you apply the hot glue it doesn't cool super fast, and that'll make for a really nice bond between the two parts. With the parts glued together, I could give it a quick sanding on my one inch vertical strip sander. With it glued in place, now you can see how the threaded knob will push up against the rub plate, and that'll cause a clamping force on the table to hold the stop block in place. Now I can go ahead and glue in the rail that will guide the stop block in the slot on the table, and it's important that this is installed square, so I'm just double checking its alignment, and then gluing it in place. In addition, I also glued on the two small blocks that guide the extension arm at the top of the stop block. Next I cut out this piece of clear plastic, and this will hold on the extension arm to this main stop block. With it being clear, I'm also going to be able to use it to see the measuring tape that will be applied to the extension arm. I purposely cut it out a little bit too large, so that once it was attached to the stop block, I could come back and trim the edges flush to the wood. The last piece I'm cutting out is the extension arm itself, which is another small piece of half inch plywood with a small rabbit cut in one edge, so that the self adhesive tape measure has a place to sit. I set up my router table to cut the slot in the extension arm. There is a quarter inch slot that goes almost all the way along the length of the extension arm, and that's where the bolt that will hold down the extension arm will slide through. With the extension arm in the stop block, I could use it as a guide to know where to drill the hole for the hold down bolt into the clear plastic, and then all the way through the bottom of the stop block. And then on the bottom of the stop block, I widened the hole to a slightly bigger diameter, so that the head of the bolt could sit flush in the stop block. With that, all the parts are completed, and I could give everything a good sanding once again on the one inch vertical strip sander, knocking off all the sharp edges and corners, and giving it an overall nice feel. After sanding, I also gave all the wooden parts two coats of water-based polyurethane to keep it looking nice and operating well. And then it's time for final assembly. Before the clear plastic goes on, I'm adding a red line, which will be used to indicate where we're at on the tape measure. And to do this, I just scored several times with the knife, and then filled that score with red paint. By wiping away most of the paint, there's still a little bit left in the groove made by the knife, and that makes a laser straight red line that's really easy to show up on the tape measure. To apply the tape measure in the correct place, I first set my calipers to one inch, and then extended the arm exactly one inch, and then locked it down. Since the tape measure on my workbench runs out at 15 inches, I applied the tape measure with the 14 inch mark lined up with the red line on the clear plastic. Since the extension arm is sticking out by one inch, this is now accurate if I set the main stop block to 15. Now the numbers on the extension block will take over and be the correct length. And with that, the stop block's finished. Let's test it out. If you're interested in seeing how I made this miter saw station and other cool features that it has, be sure to check that out. I am actually still editing it right now because it is a massive video. But when it's done, I'll put links in the description and at the end of the video so that you can go check those out. Thanks for watching. See you in the next project.