Crosscut sled

[Chuck Hoffman]

Just finished making a new crosscut sled. Cut a piece of 3/8" X 3/4" oak for the miter slot runner, carpet-taped it to the back of the 1/2" ply sled bottom and attached it in place with screws. Cut a piece if hard maple for the fence, screwed down one end and squared it up with my accurate framing square. Clamped it in place and installed another screw to secure the other end then put a third screw in the middle. Trimmed off the edge of the sled and test cut some wide plywood panels. They came out perfect. Flipped them over to check and they were still perfect.

First time I've EVER gotten it right on the first try.

[Chuck Hoffman]

BTW, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

[toller]

You did better than me. Mine is off by about a half degree. I have to fix it, but haven't gotten around to it.

[Mark & Juanita]

Found mine was off slightly -- tuned it with a couple of layers of tape near the blade slot on the offending side. (I was off about 0.005 in 3")

[Roy Smith]

A good thing when making a sled is to plane a small bevel into the forward lower edge of the fence before attaching it. You end up with something that looks like this:

| | | Fence | | | | | | | | | +------/ +------------------------------------------ | Plywood base +------------------------------------------

The little relief space makes it easier to get a piece of wood flat up against the fence without tiny imperfections in the corner (or bits of sawdust) from holding it off the fence face. It's the same reason squares often have a little cutout at the inside corner.

[Chuck Hoffman]

When I built my tenoning jig it was off slightly. The rail would be just proud on one side and just shy on the other. Didn't measure how far it was off. Took two tries but it's fixed now.

[Duane Bozarth]

What's that story about pigs, sight and acorns????

Great! Feels good when it works, doesn't it! :)

[bridger]

I hope that middle screw is out of line with the blade....

[Chuck Hoffman]

Actually, I'm using a more primitive design. The runner fits in the left miter slot and the cut line is at the right edge of the sled.

[Silvan]

Hey, that one's a keeper, and a forehead slapper. Duh. Why didn't I think of that? Just like LV's saddle square too, and umpty scadillion similar critters.

[Silvan]

Hoo boy. Mistake #1. Then for Mistake #2, I had the brilliant genius rocket science idea to use a piece of angle iron to reinforce the fence. Oh yeah, brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

I still have that piece of angle iron I cut out of the middle of that around here somewhere. Got a pretty a you please ATB notch cut out of it. Carbide is good stuff. Amazingly, it didn't even seem to dull the blade all that much, and I have done more damage hitting nails.

Version #3 or #4 finally worked out perfectly.

[Larry Blanchard]

Actually, the angle iron isn't that bad an idea. But it goes on the top back of a fence so the blade never gets high enough to touch it :-). A

1" angle iron and a 4.5" high fence, for example.