Carter Products
F-A-S-T Fence Alignment System Tool for Bandsaws- 5 Piece
$59.99
Did you know that a bandsaw blade could change its angle as much as 18-degrees depending on where it rides on the top or bottom wheel? Multiply that over the length of the table, and many fences can be as much as 3/4" out of square. The Carter Products® F.A.S.T.™ Fence Alignment System...
Details
Features:
- Precisely match the fence angle to the blade angle, using the blade itself as a guide
- Magnetic bars attach to each other to setup wider cuts
- Bar has notch for blade teeth to rest perfectly flat against blade body
- Ruled scale for setting fence distance from fence to blade
- Great tool for setting router bit depth on router table or sub-base
- Bar Length: 6"
- Minimum Rip Width: 1/8"
- Maximum Rip Width: 1-7/16" (sum of all 5 bars stacked)
- (1) 1/8" F.A.S.T. bar
- (1) 3/16" F.A.S.T. bar
- (1) 1/4" F.A.S.T. bar
- (1) 3/8" F.A.S.T. bar
- (1) 1/2" F.A.S.T. bar
- (1) Adhesive backed foam insert
Articles & Blogs
Hot New Tools: Carter F.A.S.T.(Fence Alignment System Tool)
It’s not often that a manufacturer invents a slick solution to a long-standing woodworking problem. So hats off to Carter Products for alleviating some serious resawing aggravation! The challenge with resawing has always been setting your fence dead parallel to the cutting path of the blade. This can be tricky because the blade itself may not be perfectly parallel to the edge of the saw table due to the crown of the wheels or table misalignment. And any deviation of fence parallelism from the cutting path can cause blade wander, miscuts, and perhaps a bit of profanity.
Reviews
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Useful, but conceptually redundant
The Carter F-A-S-T Alignment System Tool consists of five aluminum “setup bars” of different thicknesses, any one of which can be cleverly (and accurately) helpful in aligning a bandsaw’s blade to be parallel to the saw’s miter slot (to which the fence should also made parallel.) The other four bars are redundant. I can’t imagine anyone setting a fence’s location solely by using any one of these bars, because the bars have notches that accommodate the offset of the sawteeth; a workpiece cut after using any of these bars to set the fence’s location will be narrower than the bar’s nominal thickness by the offset of the teeth. Experienced woodworkers are far more likely to continue using a scale to set up the fence’s location, and making a test cut before proceeding with the work. The bars DO perform an important function, though: to visually indicate the axis of the sawblade so that it can be adjusted (by tweaking the tracking on the saw’s upper wheel) until the blade is parallel with the miter slot—regardless of where on the crown of the wheel it tracks. (The often-heard suggestions to keep track of either the bottom of the sawteeth gullets or the centerline of the blade are flapdoodle; the only blade tracking that eliminates drift is the one—regardless of where it falls on the tire—that makes the blade parallel to the miter slot on the saw’s table.)
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Disappointed
Got them on sale and got home to test them out… 2 out of 5 have the magnet epoxied into the hole unevenly so that they stick to the blade SO FAR out of alignment that they induce blade drift with my magnetic fence. This is a magnetic fence I built myself because I also tried to buy that from Carter and couldn’t find one that was actually square enough to the table to stay solidly attached when adjusted square using the set screws. I’m most definitely done wasting my money on anything from Carter at this point. Woodcraft is great though!
