Several years ago a friend gave me a small inexpensive Skill band saw. I rarely use it, but when I do I have wanted a miter gauge for it. The slot on the table is an odd size, so I could not find one to buy for it. And even if I could have, I was surprised at how much miter gauges were. So I just drew one in LightBurn and made it myself. I thought I would share the project here and post the file for anyone who might want to make their own. With some minor adjustment to the design, you could get this to work for any width of slot your tool has:
Yes, I used 6mm clear acrylic. I thought clear would be ideal to allow for indexing the angle to the sliding rail. Note the rail has a line down the center. When the line meets the mark on the gauge, the angle is “dialed-in”. So being able to see through the material was helpful. I made an update to the design that would work well for opaque material (attached to this post). I just added a point to the bottom of the slide rail and very short notches cut through the material:
That’s great. I hope if it isn’t at least useful that it is just something fun to have built for yourself.
Also, if you make this on opaque material, don’t forget to reverse the already mirrored text. (Just select the entire gauge and mirror it). The text is mirrored for the great look it has on clear acrylic (from the back side). But that wouldn’t work too well if the material was opaque or even a transparent dark color (like smoke).
