Retrofitting A Delta T2 Fence to a Craftsman Table Saw

Step 6 Drilling the rear rail...

Go ahead and put the fence in place. Because of the motor sticking out of the back of the saw, we have to approach the rear rail a bit differently. We can't get the saw horse up to the saw, so we have to use clamps to hold it in place. Luckily, the rear rail is lighter and much less cumbersome, so its pretty easy to just clamp it in place making sure to line up your zero reference lines. With a clamp on each end, just loosen one end at a time and bump the rail up until the fence is raised off the table evenly with the front (in my case, 1/16"), and even across the back of the saw. On my saw, the top of the rear rail was 11/16" below the table top. Once you're confident everything is where it should be, mark the holes for drilling just like you did on the front. Using a similar set up on the drill press, drill the holes. However, it is not necessary to countersink these holes since the bolt heads won't interfere with anything. Now bolt the rear rail on and install the fence.

One thing to note, I actually used a couple of smaller diameter bolts I had laying around the shop for the rear rail. This gave me a little more room to tweak and fine tune things.

Comments

[shafiqj]

Nice instructions! However, I found that drilling into my saw table was a lot easier. I lined up and used one existing hole on the table with the front rail and drilled the next two. 10 mins for the front of the table (front rail) and 10 mins for the back of the table (rear rail) and I was done. The only remaining thing to do was to remove the sticky measure tape on the guide tube and move it over to the zero point. No other measurements needed.

[bsczap]

This is the way to go. Here's my writeup about it. http://tiny.cc/craftsman-t2-fence

[jster]

Alot simpler