Steel City Table Saw Fence Review by Elton Hammond P.Eng.
This is a review of the Steel City Table Saw fence. The same fence is used on all their models. The amazing thing to me after all this writing, discovering and testing was the fact that Steel City completely miss out on telling their customers in their literature, web site and trade shows about the clear advantages they offer over other table saw fences. They will sell this fence to anyone who wants to retrofit it to another saw, but don't even make that known to potential customers!! The dealer I dealt with did not make any attempt to make this information known, or have sales personnel who were familiar enough with woodworking to even understand the signifigance of these benefits.
Steel City Table Saw Fence
What Steel City Forgot To Tell You!
I spent a great deal of time researching the best value saw for my needs and after months of reviewing web sites, chat rooms and speaking to experienced table saw owners we arrived at the Steel City 35915 cabinet saw primarily for it's: - riving knife safety (which I now appreciate after only reading about it previously!)
- 3 HP motor for ripping thick hardwoods (easy cuts are so nice on thick hard woods!!) - Dust collection port on a fully enclosed housing ( Sawdust is for dust collectors!!) - Excellent fence reputation and style. (I love straight, consistent, repeatable cuts!) - good value (I love to keep some of my money!) - good fit with EKHO's Mobile Workshop design. However many of it's best subtle features remained hidden to us until we actually started using it and speaking to people like Jim Box of Steel City after the fact.
EXCEPTIONAL FENCE:
The Steel City fence is now reputed by many Internet chat groups to be the best in the industry, but nobody really gave me any convincing reasons, nor could I spot all the reasons just by observing a stationary unit in a show room, so I just took it on faith. Now I can start to understand and tell you why. It truly surprises me that these very important and worthwhile competitive advantages are not articulated clearly on Steel City's web site and brochures. · Both fence faces are CNC machined perfectly parallel so that once you calibrate the parallelism with the blade on one face, the other face is good to go too. Some of their competitors use shims to adjust things manually that can never match CNC accuracy! · The fence glides along the steel track like it is on high quality ball bearings, both in feel and sound. It is not, in fact, but it gets this quality feel and action from the threaded vertical nylon studs that glide along the powder coated, pebble grained, paint finish like a curling rock sliding on slippery ice. · The patented nylon horizontal face screws prevent the fence from racking (twisting) as it is pushed along the track. It can be grabbed at either end and pushed along like it is mounted in a ball bearing rail. AMAZINGLY smooth and refined!! Well done Steel City!! The high density white UHMW polyethylene material on both fence faces is common to many (but not all) of today's fences, but does work extremely well to let your wood slide down the face easily. No sudden jerks or stops that can encourage the occasional blade burn marks or kick backs. · The great locking handle works well because of it's simple design and built in holding magnet.
Steel City Table Saw Fence
PARALLEL FACES: Both faces are machined parallel by CNC so that once you calibrate the parallelism with the blade on one face, the other one is good to go too. The high density white UHMW polyethylene material on both fence faces works extremely well to let your wood slide down the face easily. No sudden jerks or stops that can encourage the occasional blade burn marks or kick backs.
Vertical Nylon Stud Glides on Pebbled Paint like a curling rock!
NYLON STUD GLIDES ON PEBBLED PAINT The fence glides along the steel track like it is on high quality ball bearings, both in feel and sound. It is not, in fact, but it gets this quality feel and action from the vertical threaded nylon studs that glide along the powder coated, pebble grained, paint finish like a curling rock gliding effortlessly on slippery pebbled ice.
Horizontal Nylon Stud Prevents Racking
The patented nylon horizontal face screws prevent the fence from racking (twisting) as it is pushed along the track. It can be grabbed at either end and pushed along like it is mounted in a ball bearing rail. AMAZINGLY smooth and refined!! Well done Steel City!! For such a simple long running concept it is impressive that you found a way to improve on the best that was out there with such admirable simplicity.
Great Locking Handle for the fence!
This great locking handle works very well because of it's simple design and built in holding magnet. The clean, simple elegant handle plays a big role in locking the fence in rigidly to ensure there is no wiggling once you start feeding your cuts down the edge. The simple built in magnet lets you keep it up and out of the way when it is not locked down tightly for those square, repeatable cuts that we all dream of!!
Very Safe Riving Knife
GOOD BLADE and SAFE RIVING KNIFE:
The standard 40 tooth Steel City blade was doing a good job for my work. However, I have now replaced it with a new Ridge Carbide 40 tooth blade that is dramatically better. The riving knife provides excellent safety protection in stopping kickback. See Fine Woodworking's web site to understand the reasons why riving knives are so important for safety.
