# Crosscut sleds



## Scrapfe (Jul 25, 2008)

I liberated a 5’ X 2’ piece of furniture grade hardwood plywood from a dumpster the other day. 

I am thinking of making myself a new crosscut sled for my table saw. The plywood came with a nice hunk of red oak plywood ideal to make strong new sled runners. 

I am asking for ideas on how to make this the last crosscut sled I will ever need or want.

To start out I am thinking of fronting and backing the sled with two 5 foot long pieces of 2 X 8. 
What are your ideas and recommendations?


----------



## Beev (Jul 16, 2011)

That should work. I believe I would use solid hardwood for the runners though. Also, starting a few inches on either side of the blade, taper the 2x8 down to a couple of inches at the ends, to cut down on weight. You need an outfeed table to support it if you don't have one.


----------



## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Here is a link to get you started.
http://www.wordsnwood.com/2002/j.sled2/
One that is trimmed down a bit so might be lighter.
http://woodgears.ca/delta_saw/sled.html


----------



## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

I have one that is about 2x4 feet, and it is one of my most useful tools. If I was making a new one I would make it with an easily replacable blade insert section so that it could quickly be returned to a splinter free state. Don't make your sides so tall that it is inconvenient to clamp a stop on for repeat cuts. Do find some durable hardwood to use as miter slot runners. They are so small you should be able to get them out of a scrap bin.


----------



## VanderLaan (Oct 13, 2011)

Good advice so far. 8" is probably too tall for the crosspieces. Just add a 1/2" to the max blade height of your TS. As mentioned already, with anything higher, you will likely have difficulty clamping stop blocks for repeat cuts. Take a minute to cut a small groove on the inside bottom edge of the back crosspiece. This keeps the sawdust that collects on your sled from bunching up between your cutting stock and your stop block. I would also suggest that you glue some blocks on the back of the rear crosspiece to act as a blade guard. On my current sled, I just cut four 1x5x5 blocks of scrap red oak and glued them on one at a time. Finally, screw the ends of the back crosspiece to the sled and then make some test cuts. Once you get it cutting square, glue it and screw it tight.


----------



## gunter62 (Feb 13, 2011)

Instead of using wood for your runners, spring for some strips of HDPE. It's super slick and will not swell and bind like wood. I use one of these everyday and it's a worthwhile upgrade.


----------



## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

How do you attach it?


----------



## ShadowHawk (Apr 17, 2011)

Whether using wood runners or HDPE, I pre-drill & use a counter-sink bit to screw the skids to the sled from the bottom of the skid. Do a search online, and you'll also see where folks drill & counter-sink, and attach from the sled down into the skid. So - either way works. Probably easier to go from the top-down.. I think it looks better to not have the pan-head screw top showing, though.


(edited to fix my poor typing skills/spelling)


----------



## Scrapfe (Jul 25, 2008)

The flats of the sled as well as the cross pieces will stick over the sides of my saw top so clamp on stop blocks are no trouble at all. I use a dedicated stop block for every cut I make many of anyway. I find it cuts down on measuring mishaps. 

I was thinking of employing the 8 inch tall 2 bys as sort of a blade guard to help keep the heel of my hand up up and away from the blade. 

Do you think it would be best to let the runners just slide in the miter slots and let the saw table support the sled, or is it better for the runners to hold the sled a few thousands off the saw table. (I feel an OCD attack coming on) Since I retired I have been looking for a use for my feeler gauges. Either way I always do a quick sand down and apply a coat of Johnson Wax to my saw table so both of my current sleds slide like their on ice . 

I was also considering permanently attaching a couple of pennies or nickels to the bottom of the runners to cut down on drag and wear. Good idea or bad? I know nickels are a little to big in diameter, but a short visit to the anvil or bench grinder will fix that. 

That plastic wood idea sounds like a winner. How long do HDPE runners last and can I glue them on before I counter sink and screw them down? Besides it will save me the 20 cents I would have blown in on nickels. Odfrank has nothing on me when it comes to cheap…..


----------



## Nantom670 (Jul 29, 2011)

what is the purpose of piece across the backside?


----------



## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

The sleds are going to be used for cutting hive pieces to size?


----------



## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

View attachment 1108
you use a crosscut sled along with a tablesaw to make safe accurate cross cuts. They are extremely usefull for woodworking of all kinds. Especially if you need to cut a lot of parts to the same length.


----------



## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

well right, I use one for machining dados into top bars and end bars but it is tiny compared to the ones described here. Other than that the fence on my table saw is more than accurate for longer pieces. I don't have any noticable discrepancies between batches. I don't make things one at a time either, hives are made in batches of 20's or higher. Top bars, end bars, bottom bars are made in batches of 500 or more. The sled helps with dadoing immensely but the fence is fine for everything else.


----------



## Scrapfe (Jul 25, 2008)

Nantom670 said:


> what is the purpose of piece across the backside?


The board at the front of the sled is used as a fence to hold your work pieces against and keep them square to the blade. The board at the rear of the sleds' purpose is to hold the two bottom pieces of the sled together and level with each other after the saw blade is raised and a cut is made through the floor of the sled to allow for the saw blade to pass through. A crosscut sled also looks very much like a sleigh bed, it acts like a ZERO clearance blade insert, and if set up and used correctly is a tape measure, square, and pencil all rolled into one that is never off or wrong by even an eye lash. 

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/how...ng-skills/build-a-tablesaw-crosscut-sled.aspx

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=slei...bnw=191&start=12&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:18,s:12


----------



## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

Scrapfe said:


> it acts like a ZERO clearance blade insert, and if set up and used correctly is a tape measure, square, and pencil all rolled into one that is never off or wrong by even an eye lash.


Now that's the truth.

I spent a good 3 hours assembling and getting the runners squared to the back of the sled. Now, after the initial cut and then setting up stops, I can actually see the variances of 1/64" in the stop blocks by measuring from the cut made through the floor of the sled.

It took 25 minutes to machine dados into 200 end bars.


----------



## Scrapfe (Jul 25, 2008)

Anyone want to give me their opinion about whether to raise the sled floor off the saw table a tad, (by using runners slightly thicker than 3/8 or .375 of an inch) or to allow the sled to sit and slide on the saw table proper?


----------



## lakebilly (Aug 3, 2009)

Not sure how far you are in constructing your sled, this one is pretty sweet & there is a part two vid for attachments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZuyC7udVjs&feature=related

I used vinyl stock (Azek, pricey) for guides & I keep my table top waxed w/car wax for easy sliding.

I haven't made endbars, but I would plow out the dado on a 2x6, shape it & then cut multiple endbars, not one @ a time.

Hope this helps.


----------



## taydeko (Jan 3, 2012)

> I was thinking of employing the 8 inch tall 2 bys as sort of a blade guard to help keep the heel of my hand up up and away from the blade.


This seems a little too high to me. You want to be able to hold the work piece down with your hands in most cases. I am building a sled also. I will be making the highest point on the fence about 1 or 2 inches above the highest cut of the saw. On either side of that, I will cut the fence down so it is about 3 inches high so I can easily reach the work piece. I will make the width of the tall part wide enough that I can't touch the blade with my fingers when my thumb is hooked around the tall part. My other concern about 2x lumber is it's dimensional stability. It has a strong tendency to warp and move around, so I would be very concerned about having a warped fence. It seems to me that a couple pieces of high quality plywood laminated together would make a better fence from that perspective.



> Do you think it would be best to let the runners just slide in the miter slots and let the saw table support the sled, or is it better for the runners to hold the sled a few thousands off the saw table.


Everything I have seen lets the table support the sled, keeping the bottom of the slide a few thousandths above the bottom of the miter slot.



> I was also considering permanently attaching a couple of pennies or nickels to the bottom of the runners to cut down on drag and wear. Good idea or bad?


It seems like this could abrade your miter slot over time. If the runners are not touching the bottom of the slot, you wouldn't get any drag or wear from them. Adding coins that did touch the bottom or sides would simply increase drag and wear.

Ted


----------



## windfall (Dec 8, 2010)

waxed Hardwood of UHMW runners, not metal.

The sled should bear on the table otherwise you will get vibration and chatter. Best case it messes up your cut, can also toss a piece not clamped down rock solid.

rwuster,
Are you machining you end bar dados individually? Why not dado the whole blank before slicing it up into the individual bars? I think it is quite a bit faster and only the "last" one in the blank should have any blowout. You can do this with a sled, but a tenoning jig is easier/less set up for this sort of end grain "ripping"


----------



## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

This is why I love having a nice miter saw, one less sled to build. Anyway, I do the same thing for my end bars windfall, but I have a little sled with a backer that fits overtop my fence to prevent any blowout when I make the dado grooves. I've been making them all out of scrap 2x4s. You can get 7 per block (Maybe 8 with a bandsaw) on the tablesaw. I haven't tried 2x6s yet, hopefully they fit on the jointer I have. I've got a few sleds built for making rabbets, but they are just made out of MDF so they aren't going to last forever, but they work fine for the 50-100 boxes I make a year.


----------

