New Product - "Jessem Mite-R-Slide"

The Jessem Mite-R-Slide looks to be a great new product. The company introduced it at last August's IWF Show in Atlanta. At that time, it drew great crowds. The prototype was shown at the show, now the product is released. I was lucky to be one of a small group to get the first run. The picture at right is from their website. It shouldn't take long for Beth and me to install it and make it ready for use.
	Beth starts by reading over the manual. We have been told that this is a "draft copy" and is missing the parts diagram, but we claimed that we could probably figure it out without.
These are the parts.
	The first step requires that you add the thick brass washer to the handle.
And screw the handle into the miter gauge.
	Beth goes to the next step which is to put in place a fence clamping piece. The photo in the instructions are clear and lead the way, so far. One thing Beth notices is that many parts have what seem to be countersunk holes. In fact what the Jessem engineers have done is to bevel the tops of some holes so that it is easier to get screws into them blindly — when you can't see the hole. A very nice touch.
With both brass screws holding the clamping piece in place, Beth can slide the miter assembly onto the fence.
	You can't see them, but Beth is tightening the last of four screws which hold the miter fence onto the the slide assembly
Now Beth attaches the large clamping bracket to 4 nuts that she has slid into the two large T-tracks. She passes the bolts through two adjustment blocks.
	At the other end, she attaches the smaller clamping bracket.
She can now fasten the slide assembly to the fence brackets. She is only supposed to hand tighten them at this point.
	As a first step in the alignment process, Beth has placed two Formica sample chips under the miter fence as spacers. While pressing the fence firmly down against the table, she tightens the clamping brackets — first on this end and then at the further end.
After that, she uses one chip to check that the new miter fence runs evenly along the router fence. Both these alignments take very little time.    By the way, these two clamps hold the slide assembly securely. Beth and I found that they can also create a problem if you are not careful. We checked the smoothness of the glide over the range and found that at one end, it moved with resistance. The solution was to loosen the clamps and retighten them at the same time. Evidently, we had tightened one first and when tightening the other, we "torqued" the slide a bit. Now, the slide works smoothly the whole length.
	The next alignment is for square.  This one was dead on. There is an easy adjustment to allow for the miter gauge to be adjusted, if necessary.    I think it is time for Beth to make use of this new addition.