Hookay - this one question worries me. The right half of the brain is
convinced it'sa stoopid question, the left half thinks it's worth asking.
Today's Lefties day, so here goes.

Been wondering about ways to check to see if the fence is parallel to the
blade. Already checked the mitre slot to the blade, already checked blade
for 90 degrees. Don't have any fancy dial indicators or TS-Aligner style
tools.

So, my brilliant 5:30am, coffee induced idea was to rip a long strip of
something. And measure consistency of width at the front and the back. I
ripped about 5 feet of MDF, 3" wide and checked it with a caliper. 3.064"
inches at the start of the cut and 3.058" at the end of the cut. Close
'enuff for me.

Then the Right half of the brain starts in with "you really didn't measure
anything. Simply the distance between the cutting point of the teeth and the
corresponding point on the fence." The Left half, denied the assertion for
a few minutes and then tried the ad-hominem attack.

The Right side responded with - "all I can know (surmise) is that the fence
does not deviate towards the plane of the blade - since I haven't had any
kickback incidents. It could still be out of parallel, but deviate away from
the blade plane. Or it might be parallel. My experiment was inappropriate!"

A few hours later, after the electroshock induced migraines left, I started
wondering: does it matter, do I even care? My rip test indicates that I get
a consistent width when using the fence and that's all that matters,
right!?!

Ignoring *kickback issues*, would I care whether the fence is parallel with
the plane of the blade?