In most woodshops, power tools are the real movers and shakers, the true workhorses, the meat amongst the potatoes. I enjoy hand tools for a variety of reasons, but there’s no denying the precision of a table saw or the efficiency of an orbital sander. In this article, you’ll find a few familiar tools and accessories, as well as one (shown above) that you may be unfamiliar with. However, we’ll begin with an accessory for one of the most tried and true power tools first.
STS STOCK GUIDES
The STS Stock Guides are a recently released table saw accessory from JessEm. This pair of guides attaches to the rip fence of your saw. Put simply, each guide has an adjustable arm with a rubber roller.
The arms are tilted in slightly toward the rip fence (you can see this in figure 3). This keeps force steadily applied toward the fence and the table throughout the cut, which makes for safer and easier cuts on larger pieces of stock.
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| The mounting plates screw into the rip fence of your table saw. The stock guides slide onto the mounting plates when needed, locked in place by a nut in the back. |
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| The carriage assembly allows the adjustable arms to pivot down to the thickness of the stock being cut. A lever on the right side of the guides tightens down to keep the arms set at that thickness. |
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| The arms on the stock guides are canted in toward the rip fence at 5°. As the workpiece is pushed through, the arms keep it pulled tight against the fence, making for safe and easy rip cuts on a variety of different stock. |
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| The arms keep the workpiece tight to the table throughout the cut, while the one-way bearings on the rollers help to prevent possible kickback. |
HOW THEY WORK.
The roller arms attach to a carriage, which is seated on a mounting plate. The mounting plates are semi-permanent fixtures, as they’re screwed directly into your saw fence. When needed, the guides slot into a series of tongues on the mounting plates (figure 1). A small threaded rod with a nut is attached to the carriage of the guides, and tightens against a bracket on the mounting plates to lock the guide in place.
The arms are then set to the thickness of the stock (as in Figure 2). After adjusting the arms until the rollers are tight against the workpiece, a lever on the right side of the carriage tightens down to hold the arm in place. Once both guides are set, they’re ready to make the cut.
PERFORMANCE.
So, how well do the guides actually work? In practice, I wouldn’t use them for every cut — but that’s why they’re easy to remove. They hold the workpiece well enough that you can make the cut safely with just one hand (or push stick). Where the guides really shine, in my opinion, is on longer boards or large panels. Not only do they make for a safer cut on unwieldy pieces, but they also hold the piece in position quite well.
This means long boards with a bow are still getting cut evenly, and you won’t jostle the workpiece if you pause to reposition or grab a push stick during a cut, preventing burn marks. They’re well-made pieces of 304 stain-less steel, and functionally take the place of a featherboard and a riving knife, all in one package.
