Bandsaw Upgrade Time: Adding a Kreg fence to my 14" Harbor Freight bandsaw.
Disassembled saw, removed table, cleaned everything out. It took a bit of time to get the correct location for drilling/tapping the mounting bolts. The HF bandsaw does not have the raised cast sections that are drilled/tapped like so many other machines. It is imperative to locate the bracket at least 1/16" below the miter gauge slot. On mine, it's closer to 3/32". Failure to do this, will result in: not being able to use the miter slot (if too high), and the fence attachment bracket, will not clear the table top (if too low). There is some adjustment, as the mounting bracket has slots, rather than holes.
Edit: The correct measurement below the miter slot is 1/8" (or slightly more), this is due to the HF saw using a 5/8" (wide) x 5/16" (deep) miter slot. The Kreg instructions are written for the more common 3/4" x 3/8" slots. The point being that the top of the side bracket needs to be low enough, so the sliding (clamping) bracket on the fence, will clear the top of the table. Mine is 'around' 9/64" below the slot, which provides the clearance necessary, without needing to drill the holes in the table too close to the edge.
After marking the correct placement for the holes, I set up the table in my drill press. Center punched the locations, used a center drill to start, then a number 7 drill for the 14-20 threads.
As there are no raised bosses for adding a fence, I needed to space out the rail for the sliding bracket to have clearance. Some 1/8" thick bushings did this nicely. New hardware, I used the provided 1/4" washers, but added some split washers.
Added a Kreg micro-adjust to the fence, laid down the measuring tape, and I'm calling this done. For now....
