Incra Wonderfence Review

A router table fence has to do three things a table saw fence does not: close in around a spinning cutter, support the workpiece either side of a cut that is happening in the middle of the fence, and collect dust from a tool that generates more of it than anything else in the shop.

The Wonderfence is Incra’s answer, and it does all three properly.

Split faces

The two faces slide independently towards the bit. Bring them in until they almost touch the cutter and two things improve at once: the workpiece is supported right up to the cut so there is no tear-out at the entry and exit, and the exposed part of the bit is reduced to the width of the cut.

That second point is a safety feature that also improves dust collection, because the extraction port is now pulling from a nearly enclosed space.

The jointer trick

Offset the outfeed face forward by the depth of cut, fit a straight bit, and the router table becomes an edge jointer: the infeed face references the unjointed edge, the bit removes a set amount, and the outfeed face supports the freshly cut edge.

For a shop without a jointer, or for jointing a short piece that is awkward on a machine, this alone justifies a fence with adjustable faces.

How it is sold

Worth being clear about: the Wonderfence is designed to mount on an Incra positioning system, and the Amazon listing is the TS-LS fence system with the Wonderfence and router accessories included. You are buying a table saw fence and a router table fence together.

If you already own an Incra positioning system, buying the Wonderfence separately from Incra or a dealer is the cheaper route.

The honest comparison

A shop-made router fence — a straight piece of MDF with a bit opening, a shop-vac port and two sliding faces screwed to it — costs almost nothing and does perhaps eighty percent of this. Plenty of excellent work comes off fences like that.

What you are buying here is machined flatness, faces that adjust smoothly and repeatably, and a dust shroud designed rather than improvised. Whether that is worth the difference depends on how much time you spend at the router table.