 A table saw, rip fence jig that you may want to build for your workshop. This multi-purpose auxiliary fence is based on the design by Bob Van Dyke, as appears in Fine Woodworking Magazine No. 231. This table saw jig consists of a base unit that straddles your fence. You then attach a various number of accessory fences to your base unit, such as sacrificial fences and tall fences to help secure your tenon cutting. The tall melamine fence can be useful in cutting panels for cabinet doors. Here I'm demonstrating using the jig to cut tenons. This is a fun and rewarding build. Hola woodworkers, Paul Carlson here, a small workshop guy. I recently got an email from Fine Woodworking Magazine with a link to a build of an accessory jig for a table saw rip fence. Coincidentally, I had just recently watched a William Ng build of a similar jig. And I decided that adding this to my workshop would be a good idea. Trying to cut tenons on a long workpiece without a tall fence is a very bad idea. I highly recommend that you watch Bob Van Dyke's video as well, and I'll have a link to that in my description down below. I have made very minimal changes to his design. Depending on the size of your table saw fence, you're going to need maybe about 24 inches of Baltic birch or Russian birch, or probably regular plywood would work. Three quarter inch plywood would be recommended for stability. I had first cut the plywood to be equal to the length of my fence, and then I cut a six inch wide strip and then a six and a half inch wide strip. Then for the straddle piece, which is going to be double layered, I measured the size of my fence, and then I wanted to add a little extra, maybe one sixteenth, so that it would be wider than my fence, and also I needed to add a little extra like a half an inch on each side to go into dados on the upright pieces. While I was cutting, I decided to go ahead and cut some extra sacrificial fences as well, and made those the same size as the front, which is six and a half inches. Then I grabbed some melamine and cut an eight and a half inch for my tall fence, and here you can see the base unit that I've cut, and these tall fence and the sacrificial fences that I've cut, and then I like to label things so I don't get them all confused later. Here I'm going to glue up the two straddle pieces that go between the front and back, and so nothing magical about that. The following day when the glue had dried, I checked to make sure that I had cut it somewhat wider than my fence so that I had some material to go into the dados on the front and back. The best way to make sure that all of your attachment holes align properly is to drill them all at once, so that's what I'm doing. Glue in some t-nuts into the backside of your front base. Make sure those are flush with the front by embedding them a little bit with a Forstner bit. Use a Forstner bit on the front of your tall fence as well. Came back to the next day, decided that my apron was pretty well filled up with sawdust and stuff, so emptied everything out, dumped it out. Don't know any other way to do that, and then here I am putting everything away. I do carry quite a bit in my apron for convenience purposes. Next, it's off to cutting the dados for the front and back of the uprights. What I did first was some test cuts to get my height right, and then I did the real cuts with multiple passes. Then I'm using my router plane to clean up the bottom of those dados. You want to sneak up on your perfect cut. Here you can see I haven't done enough yet, so I take some more off. Finally, I get a very nice fit of that cross piece into my front fence. Now, with my front fence and my cross piece being done, I set those up on the fence so that I can set it up and make sure it's square at 90 degrees, and then put my back fence up against it. Again, holding it, making sure that it's exactly square at 90 degrees, then I mark where the top of my dado will go on the back fence. Most content creators won't admit something like this, but this is actually my second attempt at a complete build of this jig. The first one went into the trash pile because for whatever reason, I couldn't get it to be precisely square or 90 degrees. Being satisfied with my dados and their sizes and everything, I went ahead and glued up my base unit. Again, checking everything as often as I can to make sure it's 90 degrees so I can make any adjustments before the glue sets. Then clean up a little bit of the glue, get the back side attached. You'll notice on the back side there's a couple of holes. Those are going to be where some clamps are used to attach the fence or securely to the table saw fence. Again, paranoid over 90 degrees, so check, check, check. Next comes putting a strip on the top of the 8.5 inch melamine that's going to be used for sliding along an additional little jig to push tenons over the saw blade. So roughed up the melamine a little bit with sandpaper and then drilled and screwed on that walnut piece and then threw some wax on there so that the jig would slide nicely. Turns out that when I attached the clamps to the back fence I had just a little bit of the screws sticking out so I ground those off with a couple of different methods. Alright, checking for squareness again. Everything seems to be really good this time. So now we're going to do some test fitting. So here I'm test fitting the tall fence with the sliding bar on it and let me admit another mistake. The hex bolts that I bought were actually a quarter of an inch too long and when I would put them in the bottom two attachment holes that would cause a problem, push the bottom of my fence out and so it seemed like it was no longer 90 degrees. It took me a while to figure that out. In fact, it took me a long time and it drove me nuts. Next you need to adjust the toggle clamps so that they have a longer stem. So I just bought some cane rubber items and then super glued those in. Here you can see I'm saving on the glue and the spray by not opening the caps but that's just for demonstration purposes. Then attach those and make sure that they would go through and reach the fence and that's one of the nice features of this jig is that it attaches securely to the fence by the use of these toggle clamp. My next step was to test my sacrificial fences and make sure all they hold the line and that those went on properly and that were exactly at 90 degrees. Next comes the push device. Maybe you want to pause the video and take a close look at that. It's really just the use of some tongue and groove units and the idea is to get it against that fence and to slide over that railing. So again go back and pause the video and take a look at that design and then I attach a clamp to the toggle clamp to the front of that and again checking for my 90 degrees because I think at this point I'm all done. I cannot provide you with the plans for this because they belong to Fine Woodworking magazine and Bob Van Dyke but go to Fine Woodworking online edition magazine number 231 download the article into a PDF and the plans are part of that article. I probably don't need these quick release clamps on my push piece here but I find that they stabilize everything so I'm going to tend to use those in addition to my toggle clamp. So this really, really works well to hold large pieces upright and keep them secure and keep your fingers out of the way and make sure things move smoothly across the blade. And then if you want to do rabbits in a piece you can use the sacrificial fences along with your dado stack and not tear up your real fence. I actually just leave the tall fence attached to this and then through a hole that I did with my drill press I hang it up on my wall out of the way. Be sure to check out the link I have down below in my description to Bob Van Dyke's build. He's got a lot of really good explanations about this project. If you like this build give me a thumbs up and a comment. You can even leave a negative comment. No problem. I'll just delete it quickly. Have a safe day in your workshop.