I picked up a Rockler Drill Press Fence a few months back when it was on sale. It has been sitting in my shop gathering dust while I was recovering from my recent surgery. I had a little spare time in the shop while my laser was busy and I figured I could knock this one out pretty quickly.
I started out with half of my old homemade table saw cross cut sled. It was already 12″ x 24″ and was made from 3/4″ thick MDF. It also had a T-Track slot cut in it from the old sled. I also had the old Powertec T-Track pieces from the sled lying around the shop as well.
After a quick “dry fit” of the new platform I setup my router table with a 3/4″ bit, set the height to 3/8″ then set the fence to 3″ off center of the bit.
Once the table was set I made two runs on the table, one for each side. These T-Track runs are to attach the back side of the fence and allow it to be moved freely along the table.
Now that I had all three T-Track slots (one was existing from the old sled) I needed to cut down the second bar to fit into these new slots. So I grabbed a hacksaw and secured the track to my assembly table with my Kreg Bench Clamp. Then proceeded to trim this piece into the 4 pieces needed to mount into the table.
I then secured the T-Track to the table with the supplied screws and mounted the fence to the back side following the instructions in the book.
Once this was completed, I fit the table to my Ryobi Drill Press. After I was happy with the placement, I took a couple of 3/4″ wood screws and washers and attached the table through the holes in the underside of the drill press table.
At this point I went to test it and found a major flaw in this design. The adjustment handle for the table height could no longer turn as it hits the table.
So, I pulled out my trusty Ryobi Jig Saw and fixed the issue..
All in all, the entire process took me less than an hour. Even tho I already had the MDF pre-cut to 24″x12″ and one of the T-Track slots was already cut, that didn’t save me that much time. It’s still a pretty simple way to add a high quality Rockler fence to a Ryobi Drill Press.