Thought I’d follow up on the Grip-Tite thingies now that I’ve installed the sheet metal plate on the fence. The magnets don’t work too well on plastic laminate that the Bies is faced with.

The direction say “countersink” for the screws (4) to make sure you get the pilot holes centered. They mean it. The countersinks in the metal plate are none too deep. Without *perfectly* centered screw holes you end up with the screw head being proud of the fence plate.

I took a metal countersink in a 1/4″ drill motor and drove it into the prepared screw holes thinking (rightly as it turned out) that the sheet metal (about 12ga) would force the point of the countersink to the center of the hole. I also deepened the original countersink in the sheet metal a tad. I did all this free hand with the Bies fence resting on the saw table. In retrospect it probably would have been better to do this on the drill press to get a pilot hole not only centered but good and perpendicular to the face. The least little bit off square to the face and the edge of the screw ends up proud, too.

Deepening the countersink tended to raise a slight burr on the uphill side of the hole so I used a good flat sanding block to hone the metal flat.

All’s well that ends well. Too late to fire up the saws tonight so we’ll have to see how they work tomorrow.