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Looking at laguna tools driftmaster , I have a delta 14" with a riser block . Anyone have experience mounting that fence to that saw ? is the unit a good unit for the 295 they are asking?

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No experience with that model but it looks way to short for re-sawing and $295 seems ridiculous (to me anyway) for a fence.

I built a fence around 11" high out of plywood that attaches to the table with clamps. Does a great job, fully drift adjustable and cost about $10 in plywood.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Would u be willing to show a pic ??

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Here you go.

In these pics, the fence isn't clamped down, I just set it on the table.

Couple things worth noting - the fence face is proud of the base plate by about 1/8" or so to allow a place for dust to accumulate without kicking the bottom of the work piece out.

The inside corner of the "gussets" were also knocked off for better alignment.

The angle is set solely by the gussets. Make sure they're 90o like 10 times before you screw it together. If stuff warps over time, you can tilt the table or use shims under the base to get parallel to the blade.

I haven't made one yet, but next time I re-saw I'm going to make some sort of elevated feather board thing to apply pressure at the top and bottom of the fence.

I built my fence this high because I build banduras which require pieces about 9 to 10" wide for a two piece back. You can always make it shorter if you don't need the added height.

Setup does take a few minutes extra vs. a dedicated fence, but if you're like me and re-saw once or twice a year when you get some fresh zoot in, you'll be alright and will have saved about $290 to spend on more zoot!

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

how do u recomend adjusting for drift ? simple adjustment on the squaring?

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

couple things:

1) I always try to get the blade centered on the upper wheel. I've read that drift is due mostly to blades not being properly centered on the wheel and I tend to agree. There's probably an influence of tooth set as well.

2) Next, I do the trick with the freehand straight cut: I'll take a piece of scrap wood around 12 or so inches long and make sure it has one flat side. I then mark a straight line and freehand cut along it, stopping halfway through the piece. I'll then use a bevel gauge to to capture the drift angle. Often after step one, it's usually pretty insignificant.

3) Now, when you set up the fence, use the bevel gauge to copy the drift angle. Lightly to moderately clamp the fence down and use a hammer at both ends to fine tune the thickness of the cut. i.e. if you tap 3 or 4 times on the far end, tap 3 or 4 times on the near end.

I find that using this method I can get 4 slices out of a piece of 4/4 S4S lumber which is usually a little under 1" thick. Pieces come out right around .125 after running them through the drum sander a few times.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I bought a DriftMaster last week to take advantage of the January sale. I posted a review on this forum sometime last week, which you should be able to find.

In terms of fitting it to your Delta, I think you'll be fine, but you can call Laguna and they should be able to tell you. It definitely can be installed on non-Laguna bandsaws, and since the Delta 14" is one of the most popular in history, I have to believe it will fit. You may have to drill some holes, though.

In terms of it being a good unit, yes, it is an exceptionally well-made tool. I'm extremely pleased with mine. (The written installation instructions are not good, however.)

Andy correctly notes that no one really needs a fancy fence. Of course, no one really needs a Lie-Nielsen handplane rather than a Stanley, or a blue steel Japanese chisel rather than a blue-handled Marples chisel. Certainly, you can create an equally great guitar regardless of whether you are using the finest tool money can buy or the cheapest tool at the swap meet. But the better tools require a lot less effort. I can work 10-15 times as long between sharpenings when I use my Japanese chisels as I can when using my Marples. Which is why I use my Japanese chisels almost exclusively nowadays (and cuss less) I had to spend 2-3 hours fettling my old Stanley handplanes when I got them, while the Lie-Nielsens worked beautifully out of the box.

For me, this was well-worth the $290. I can see already that this will save me significant time and frustration trying to get my drift adjustment set just perfectly and getting the fence positioned exactly where I want it. With my old fence, adjusting for drift and bumping the fence until it was in the perfect position were two of those "hassles" that I did not enjoy. As a result, I changed my blade less often than I should have, and too often settled for "close enough" in terms of both drift and fence position. For me, the $290 investment does a lot more than just make it easier to set up my fence -- it makes it more enjoyable, and more likely that I will do it right. YMMV.

Thanks everyone for your input , right noe i take a piece of 3/4 and cut it in half and get set my planer and take it to size , however i could see the posibility of doubling my wood by having a good set up.

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

The Driftmaster model I have is a couple of years old; I'm assuming it attaches the same way as the current model.
The main 'rail' (round HD tube) for the fence bolts to the front of the main saw table with two hefty bolts.
The Laguna table is about 1.75" thick (deep) and the bolts attach near the bottom edge of the table casting.
My Grizzly 14" (Delta knockoff) has a table that is 1.5" thick.
To use the Driftmaster on the Grizzly it would be necessary to bolt an adapter plate of some kind between the saw table and the Driftmaster rail.
If you are handy enough to build a guitar, this shouldn't be much trouble at all- some bolts, spacers, aluminum or steel flat bar will do the trick. The fence is quite a bit longer than the saw table, so moving it back a bit with an adapter shouldn't cause any problems.

The Driftmaster has two 'improvements' over the standard fences-
1) Easy adjustment of angle for drift
2) Micro-adjust fence movements.
Both these ideas could be added to a home-built fence with a bit of ingenuity, if you enjoy making tools and jigs.
I really like my Driftmaster, but (for me) a $300 fence makes more sense on a $2k+ saw than on a $700 saw. I'd proven to myself that my Laguna was going to work well for resawing before I bought the Driftmaster. Just adding that fence is not going to make a saw perform better; it just makes fence adjustments easier.
Cheers
John

good point the saw isnt a bad saw , but its no 2k saw either . again thanks everyone for the input

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

James-
Sorry if it sounded like I was being dismissive about your saw- it's one of the best 14" saws made. I never had much luck re-sawing with my smaller saw, but others have certainly done so.
Putting the $$ into good blades ( somebody mentioned a 3/8 carbide Iturra blade?) might get you more 'bang for the buck' than a Driftmaster. I really think a lot of the difference with my Laguna is that I bought a carbide band to put on it.

Send me a pm if you want some more details about the Driftmaster or pics- you could probably modify your fence or build a knockoff less a few of the features pretty easily.

Cheers
John

For those who are interested, Laguna has the Driftmaster manual online:
http://www.lagunatools.com/company/DriftMaster-Technical-Support/DriftMaster-Operating-Manual

Looking at the online manual (WAY better than the printed stuff that came with my Driftmaster), it's pretty clear that the adapter brackets would allow easy mounting on any saw that could handle 1/2" holes in the front edge of the table. That would include my 14" Grizzly, I'm pretty sure.

Cheers
John

Andy's fence (and aproach) is the time honored way of doing it. You must freehand cut a square board along a line about half way through. At that point, any blade drift will be evident by the lay of the board on the table. Simply line a fence up with that and you are good to go. You must do this with the driftmaster as well. No clamps required. Just slide the fence up to the board, adjust the angle of the fence, then lock everything in. From then on, you are drift compensated. You may minimize drift by getting the blade as close to the center of the wheels as possible, but residual drift will always be there. Also, standard bandsaw fences will not work! They do not typically tilt.

So, for $290 what does the driftmaster get you? No jig making, no clamps, and most important of all, repeatable thickness on resawing (via the micro-adjust wheel). It takes guts to throw a 4/4 board of expensive figured tone wood up against the fence and trust it. It takes even more guts to trust that the cut is not up against the fence, but on the outside of the board. And it takes great faith that 4 turns of the wheel will set you up for another 0.15" slice. But the driftmaster does just that.

By the way, that $290 includes a Resaw King blade sized for your saw at saw mill creek. And free shipping as I recall. You can spend $290 on a blade alone. Its a no brainer.

Mike

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