JessEm Mite-R-Excel II Precision Miter Gauge

Summary:

The good:
Very well crafted, solid, excellent miter slot width adjustability.

The not so good:
Could use some more design work for the flip down stop, although it is still quite excellent.
$$$

Rating:
4-stars (nothing is ever perfect!)

Price paid:
Introductory price of $269 + free shipping (May 2019)

Mite-R-Excel II web site

I bought the Jessem to complement my decade old Incra 1000 and hopefully overcome several of the design issues with the Incra when being used for my style of work

Some history:
The factory miter gauge that came with my 1998 Delta Unisaw was to say the least, not very useful (everyone knows what is typically wrong with a factory miter). It was because of these limitations I bought the Incra 1000.

Incra 1000:
A whole new world of possibilities opened up, primarily the ability to quickly set the fence and angles.
The one shining quality the factory unit possessed was the miter bar fit the slot on my tablesaw perfectly. My saw has an oversized slot (0.759" width). The Incra, as with probably every other aftermarket miter being made, has a miter bar sized to fit the few common saws with undersized miter slots. With some clever tricks, these companies came up with ways to effectively expand the bar and correct for a sloppy fit. My problem is I needed to overcome more than 0.010" of slop.

Long story short, the adjustability of the Incra couldn't quite make up for the gap. I created a good workaround with ball bearing tipped set screws, but there were other issues with the Incra I didn't want to deal with any more.

Enter the Jessem.
Sort of an impulse buy at double the price I paid for the Incra 1000 but I don't mind paying up for some of the finer tools that can really make a difference in precision and/or setup times. Other examples where I wasn't initially sure it was the right thing to do, but in the end it was, include an Incra PRL router lift, VerySuperCoolTools fence to replace my squirrely Biesmeyer, and a Performax 16/32 drum sander.

First Impressions:

Gotta love the sound of the UPS driver pulling into the driveway. A true Pavlovian response 8^)

The Jessem was exceptionally well packaged and certainly has a bit of "heft" compared to my other gauges.
Some assembly required of course!

The entire unit smells of the quality I am used to with Canadian products. Much like Veritas/Lee Valley planes and Leigh jigs, the machining and finish seemed flawless.

The miter body is thick aluminum, chromed steel miter bar, extruded aluminum fence, and stainless steel hardware.
There is the usual final assembly required with a few bags-'o'-bits to chew through.

Good, clear instructions are available to do the setup

Step 1: Fit the miter bar.

My saws miter slot has been previously aligned to the saw blade The saw is a right tilt and I use the left slot for 99% of my work, so this is where all the alignments are referenced.

The bar is placed into the left miter slot, pushed over to the left side, then the three (forward, center, and rear) eccentrics are tightened. Quick, simple, and done! The Incra has nylon/HDPE washers that expanded out as a screw is tightened. This effectively widens the bar, but they'll only expand so far before the screws snap and/or the plastic wears away requiring a new setup.

The Jessem eccentrics are steel and run smoothly in the Unisaws slot.

They do need to be periodically checked and adjusted.

5 stars
In my opinion this is place where Jessem nailed it!

Step 2: Align the head to the table/bar

The head of the miter needs to then be squared with the bar. This is done with a few jam-screws and lock screws. I used an accurate engineers square to assist the process.
The same system is used to square the face of the miter to the table. There is some crosstalk between the two alignments, but the screws, once locked down, won't let these adjustments drift over time.

Here is a photo of some of the lock down screws:

I slid on the extruded fence to check for final squareness, there is a slight (0.004") dip (concave) in the fence face. Difficult to photograph, but you can barely see the light showing through in this shot with an angle setup gauge.

 

I have no worries about the slight dip, the sacrificial wood fence I install rides true and the tensioning of the fence bolts seems to pull this dip back to flush. Wish they would have machined the faces as extrusions always distort slightly like this.

4 stars
For this part, the adjustment is a bit "fiddly", but very secure and solid when done.

That covers the major assembly and alignment. the rest is the accessories.

Install/set the fence locating pin.

In my mind, this is one of the features that I could really care less about but I can see it being a simple feature that is easy to use.

 

In this image, you can see the two lock screws for sliding the fence left/right and between the two is a pin which is used to lock the fence into a preset location. The idea being you need to move the fence to clear the blade when doing a non-zero miter, then want to move it back to the same spot when returning to zero. This keeps the "built-in" tape measure on the fence top accurate, but I never really rely on that measurement as it isn't as accurate as a good steel rule. This is a handful of extra hardware that to me is not really worth the benefits.

Note that this "tape measure" is not a slide in plastic scale like on the Incra, it is a scale mounted to an aluminum bar that glides in the slot and is held in position by a small set screw.

I would have been happier with some of the "ratcheting" style lock levers being used for the fence position lock instead of the thumb screws. Ergonomically it kind of sucks reaching in there to loosen/tighten those screws. I'd rather have a lever.
Tool free operation is always a plus!

3 stars
For over thinking it!

The board stop

This is another area where Jessem could have done better. They did real good, but not quite as good as it could be.
There is a micro adjuster option now available.

The board stop rides in a slot on top of the fence and is locked down with a lever. This reads directly off of the measuring tape, but there is quite a gap between the reference edge and the tape surface, making for parallax errors. I need better accuracy than that so I always measure from the blade to the face of the stop.
The design is typical over the industry.

 

The stop flips over when needed or back when not. Very useful feature, but as you can see, the stop is cantilevered
on a bolt, this causes mechanical slop when changing force applied with a board.

I placed a dial gauge against the stop and provided some typical forces that I would use when holding a board both against the fence and against this stop.

 

 

About 0.015" of uncertainty. Not bad, but when cutting critical lengths I like to have a solid stop for repeatable cuts.
Tightening the pivot bolt only helps so-much before it is too tight to flip. Simple fix would be to have the flip stop carriage moved left such that it could support the stops shaft on both sides to eliminate twist.

I'm not too proud to use a Quick-Grip clamp and block of wood if it works:

 

On my old Incra, the weigh offset of this clamp setup would cause the entire fence to tilt slightly out of square with the table, very annoying!

A nice feature of the Jessem stop is you can adjust the stop block away from the fence. This clears any fence face installed.

Don't get me wrong, this stop is quite functional and I don't know if it is better/worse that other similar designs out there, but I feel it is good for quick "close enough" cuts and not for precision cuts.

4 stars for the nice thinking/fit/finish
3 stars for not making it super rigid

The stop extension:

 

As with other aftermarket gauges, the Jessem has a slide out extension with a retractable stop. This is not a fence extension since it is not  flush with the main fence body, but it will provide a way to set a stop block for workpieces longer than the fence. As a bonus, the sliding stop on this extension seems quite ridged! The black stop can be slid in/out fo action, the lever just behind it sets the extension position.

The large headed screw on the stop can be tightened to make this stop super rigid, but then it gets difficult to slide in/out. Having this use a knurled thumb screw instead would be a nice upgrade.

Note for right side miter slot use.
This hardware is all basically in the way if you wan't to use your right side miter slot. Takes a few minutes, but you can remove a few screws to allow the extension to slide out of the fence and be free to cut as normal.

4 stars: Quite functional and rigid, but could have been made to be completely removed easier for those occasions of use to the right of the saw blade.

The miter angles:

Main function of a miter gauge is to cut miters. The Jessem has preset detents at 0, 15, 22.5, 30, and 45 degrees.

 

There is a spring loaded pin that locks in on these presets so moving quickly to one is both very accurate and repeatable, Nice job Jessem! For the between angles, one must use the vernier scale. My Incra has the positive detents at every 5 degrees (and 22.5). This is great if switching back and forth between standard angles. Without the positive stops, the resetting error gets "fuzzy" if you are not careful. Not that big of a deal.

The vernier scale is larger than what my Incra has and is very easy to use. For angles set without aid of the preset detents, the very large knurled handle is screwed down to lock everything. With my Incra, I've had occasions where the handle lockdown came loose from the natural twisting motion when pushing the gauge past the blade. Fortunately the detents locked in the angle. The same could happen with the Jessem, especially with the gorilla-grip knurling. Something to watch out for, but the locking with a good turn of the handle is solid.

4 stars, This is what a good miter is all about. Some more detents would be possible (plenty of room), but all the common angles are already done. Maybe a 7.5 degree?

There are many more minor things that make the Jessem Mite-R-Excel II unique, but this has been the major points.
Of course I've never compared it one-on-one with any (except the Incra 1000) of the other aftermarket gauges out there so take it for what you paid for this review 8^)

I feel like it was a good decision, I now have two miters ready for my table saw, the Incra is now set up for the right slot.

It solved my loose miter bar issues, it solved my flexing issues when clamping on a stop, the angle calibrations are dead on now and should stay that way!

I have taken the occasional "nip" out of the fence when forgetting to reset the position after using a wide blade but that just shows typical use marks.