Recently I rescued an old American 16-in. tablesaw from the junkyard. The machine had a slot-mortising chuck on the end of the arbor and provisions for bolting on a mortising table, which, unfortunately, was missing. So I made a new mortising table using the design principle sketched above. I could have used a hinged table as featured on several devices in Fine Woodworking recently, but a slanted table just felt clumsy to me.

Here’s how the table adjustment works. The threaded rod passes through a hole in the dowel in the base ramp, and is held in place by nuts. As the handwheel is turned, the threaded rod screws into a nut embedded in the dowel in the sliding table, thus ramping the table up on the base. The ramp pieces should be aligned using flanges or a slot-and-rail arrangement.

Bart Brush, Cherry Valley, N.Y.

Fine Woodworking Magazine, August 1982 No. 35

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