Excellent review. I bought a V120 to use on my bandsaw and also on my disk sander. Absolutely wonderful! I got to thinking that I would like to use one on my TS250 table saw but of course the bar won’t fit the slots. On inspection there are only 4 screws that connect the mitre components to the glide bar, so I thought I would try and manufacture my own bar and see if I could make it work. I bought an aluminium bar and set about it with a file and my belt sander. This metalwork malarkey is all new to me, but I managed to produce a bar that fitted reasonably well in the slot. I took a centre punch to the left hand side of the bar in about 4 or 5 places and managed to produce an excellent free running but slop free fit. So far so good. I took some trouble to mark the screw centres as well as I could manage and centre punched them. There are 2 at 1/4 X 20 and 2 at 3/16 X 24 and seem to be BSW. Drilling and tapping these the mitre fitted first time. Brilliant!
I then started to have some doubts about the longevity of threads cut into the ally bar holding up to constant loosening and tightening of the locking handle. Also I really fancied the Incra fence and flip shop stop thingy, and I couldn’t now use my v120 on my bandsaw and mitre without refitting to the original bar. The simple (but expensive) solution to this, was to buy another mitre Guate, and make another slider bar in steel! I ended up with a 1000HD which came with the fence and flip thingyas a package. It was actually cheaper than buying the V120 fence and stop separately.
The MK2 build. I sourced a piece of cold rolled bright steel and set about it with an angle grinder and various files. My rational was that I would only remove metal from the underside and the left hand side, thus leaving the right hand edge and the top nice and flat. I started by making the end fit just into the slot, then making on the bar with a sharpie where it went tight. I would then file a bit and repeat. This went on for what seemed to me several lifetimes, before I had a realisation that the right hand side of the bar was in fact bent. Clearly I should have checked this before starting. This meant that I had to take some material from the higher areas of the right side. After a lot of fettling, I ended up with with a very nice fit that was actually being assisted by the bend the bar, sort of spring fitting it. When the bar was pulled back about as far as it ever would be, there was a bit of slop in the fit caused by the bend on the bar moving away from the right hand side of the slot. Clearly something had to be done. My solution to this was to steal the idea from Incra. After a bit of research I bought a 1/2 inch 4 cut endmill and mounted it in my bench press drill. I drilled some flat bottom holes about 2.5 mm deep and slightly overhanging the edge of the bar. I drilled and tapped M4 holes in the centre of these. I had bought some M4 plastic washers fore this job but they turned out to be a bit thin. Cutting disks from a 3mm PVC sheet and cutting a countersink in the centre enable me to make my own plastic disk and fit them with M4 countersunk headed machine screws. Not as slick as the Incra rail, but works absolutely superbly. Might try and source a different material for my washers, I think PE would be good, my pvc is a bit brittle.
I wouldn’t have made the financial spend on this if I didn’t have a use for the Incra bar, but the standard bar fits my bandsaw, sander, and router table so I thought it was worth the try to make it fit my table saw. I’m already thinking of making a MK3 version with a straight bar and PE adjusters, but for now I’m very happy with the arrangement I’ve got with the steel bar. It’s worth noting that the bars I’ve made are of necessity thinner than the original Incra bars and that I have packed out the tops of the four bolts with washers when fitting the mitre, and therefore I have not needed to alter the lengths of the bolts in any way, so that I have not altered any of the Incra kit at all. I hope my experiences with narrower “non standard” mitre slots may be of use to others.
