| Blog series by Jon3 | updated 721 days ago | 4 parts | 5223 reads | 23 comments total |
Part 1: New, and far more accurate crosscut sled
NOTE All of my photos have been migrated to a new provider, and the links in my posts are likely out of date. You can find the photos here. My old crosscut sled sucked. I made it before I acquired a lot of knowledge, but I’ve been dragging along with it for a while. I did some test cuts the other day, and realized just how out of shape it was, so I decided it was time for a new one. So here comes the Cross Cut Sled Journey! I decided I wanted a fence with a T groove on it, s...
Part 2: Fences!
Although I didn’t snapshot it, I glued up the (2) 4” sections of ply, then ripped them clean. Here they are on top of my nice new sled. I line them up fairly well, then screw them in to the sled with (4) 2.5” #10s. I want that sucker to hold! Now that we’ve got a strong front fence on there, I’ll be able to cut through the ply body without worrying about the pieces slipping out of alignment. (One of many big mistakes with my last sled!) Oh...
Part 3: The 5 Cut Square Dance
Now here is something else I didn’t do last time. Properly squaring up the sled. I start by lining up my nice new fence, and dropping ONE screw only on the far side. Then I slice a kerf just high enough to pop through the ply, and line up the fence roughly with the square. (This part is NOT how it gets squared… read on!) Looks square, doesn’t it? HAH! I made a small T adjustment block, and grab about 1/16 inch worth of sliced up index card and pa...
Part 4: Dressin' it all up.
I’m no MMarzluf, but I know I can pretty this up a bit… I drop a scrap cherry block on the back, to act as a rear blade guard. I also like the idea of a nice plastic guard to protect me from spit up dust and chips. I have some spare lexan from my Norm Router Table project, so I grab that and it looks to be plenty. Trimmed the lexan to size. My cute little arch does make this a tiny bit problematic… I’ll just trace this and mortise it out...


















