DIY Rail Stops

Well after compressing/bending the aluminum clamp in a wood vice, narrowing the travel required to tighten, and adding a tiny bit of lube to flat washer & thread end - along with a few more uses - it's now much, much smoother. And much easier to release too.

Don't have the Mafell/Bosch stops but with this one you press down with your thumb, biasing pressure to the left so the left side (closest to Fest channel) levels against rail, and with other thumb push lever down. Removing - you use thumb to press down on top (near top front edge) and with same hand use trigger finger to pull up on lever.

Are you selling some of them?

This was just something made during commercial breaks and the finish quality is appalling.

If I had a way of producing them cheaply enough I would sell them. But the levers are going to be the spendy part here and I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t more than $7ea. + ship so I used a lever I already had.

I really wouldn’t mind buying the Bosch stops as a pair, for what they sell only one, but when you double that & add shipping it made me look around for spare parts. So my goal here was to spend way less than an o.e.m. pair & make them quickly.

I had some ¾” x 1-½” x ⅛” aluminum rectangular tubing already, it could have been a larger dimension but I like the compact size and one side needs to hit the metal of the saw base and not the removable plastic Fest insert. This is partly because you don’t want to impact too far away from being inline with rail guide rib in case it could use that lateral force to slightly bend rib over time (not that you hit it hard at all). And partly because there’s only a small portion of base to register with on the left. Using thicker than ⅛” material would help, but for myself I’m fine with the ⅛”. I had cut the clamp blanks previously and when I couldn’t find cheap levers I went with what was on hand.  
(cutting slot in aluminum - disposable scrap wood & hot glue jig and your square to align to 90º while glue cools. Box-in both sides and back on a flat sheet sled you clamp).

I did look for pre-made aluminum clamps and found possibilities in items like, LINK 1  LINK 2  LINK 3 but I would still have to widen their slot.

If I were to buy levers I would look for ’straight’ instead of angled. Though the angled one I am using doesn’t give me any issues, especially once I filed an arch into aluminum clamp, and I like the clearance it gives my thumb. So if you buy straight clamping levers make sure they are long.

Ok - here’s an option if you don’t want to cut aluminum on your nice blades.

They come two to a pack - about $3 bucks each.

Disassemble, grab hand held belt sander and sand in locations shown.
Don’t be too aggressive with removal of material because you need to sneak up on the getting cam alignment correct. After first sanding of all parts, reassemble and test where cam location ends up. The ideal location is when you can ‘snugly’ close cam to the side (parallel with rail) and then quarter turn to tighten fully.
Just go back and sand one part, usually the serrated teeth cam, down a tiny bit and reassemble to see what difference it made to cam alignment. A little bit of busy work but you should be done with the whole thing, start to finish, in under 5 min.

The only color is white. (I’m soaking one in solvent now to see how easy the cheap paint comes off for a bare finish).

NOTE: These are completely made out of cast Zinc.

Also notice that the serrated teeth are cast at an angle so you want to sand them to a 90º (maybe leave in some angle - 85º). Just eyeball everything and they turn out fine. Plastic washer is a hard plastic and I saw no need to change mine to steel. If moving serrated tooth part jams when pulled close (won’t back off from tight) just sand the edges that insert into the track on main body. *edit - wrong, it's actually the unthreaded through hole that's binding on the screw threads - just slightly ream out the unthreaded through hole.