Fritz & Franz vs Parallel Guide

I recently contributed to a thread on the Fritz and Franz fixture on the Felder forum. My reply must have made it appear that I no longer use one, and have instead moved to a parallel guide. I do have and use a F&F, but mine is a little different, and for reasons which are explained below. Perhaps this post will help others with short stroke K3 sliders.

There are two methods (or two fixtures) to use when ripping on the slider’s wagon. One is a Fritz & Frans jig, and the other is a Parallel Guide.

My slider is a “short stroke” Hammer K3. This photo was taken shortly after I received it, about 4 years ago …

There are two features to this K3 that need to be mentioned in connection with ripping.

The reason this is a “short stroke” is that the wagon is shorter than most sliders. This one is 1250mm long (although it has a cutting length of 1350mm). The average slider is double this. The reason I chose for a short wagon is that I only work with solid wood and do not rip up sheet goods. If I needed to do so, I would break them down with a circular saw. The K3 has a small footprint, even less that the contractor table saw which lived here for 20 years.

There is an even smaller version, with a 830mm slider. One might imagine that would be too short to rip on, as it may resemble the wagon on (say) a SawStop, but the fundamental difference is that the slider’s wagon runs about 1” (or less) the blade. The table saw runs 6-12” and the wagon is only designed fir crosscutting.

The second feature of note on my K3 is that the crosscut fence on the wagon is attached at the start of the wagon. All sliders with full length wagons attach their fences at the far end. The relevance of this is that my slider wagon is set up with some features in reverse - giving it some advantages of a tablesaw.

Here is a video of a Fritz & Franz jig …
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0PyFjtSHrE

The first version of my F&F was used in this way ..

I needed to set up a fence/stop at the end of the wagon …

This proved to be extra work - the F&F jig is intended for rapid use. It occurred to me that, since my K3 wagon was reversed, my F&F also needed to be reversed.

The main crosscut fence has a zero stop for positioning boards, both for crosscutting or ripping …

The other end has a sliding stop, which can be locked down to the track (since we are pushing against it) …

The front has markings to match the crosscut fence …

While this F&F works really well - it is possible to rip 1”x1”x1” safely - I built another fixture for repeated rips and tapers. This is a parallel guide.

There is a full write up here:
http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Powered...rK3Slider.html

Mike Keinhop built this one ..

This is my version …

Here demonstrating a narrow rip, but it can do wide boards as well as tapered legs …

It may be added that a rip cut can be completed using the rip fence in the same manner as a table saw. This was my earlier post. However, rips off a slider, completed on the wagon, produce glue line joints. A totally different class of cut altogether.

Regards from Perth

Derek

March 2022