Last year I picked up some used Red wood that i made my deck railling with from Craigslist.

And some Birch that I made pocket doors out of. I love a good Lumber Find.

I started by gluing 4 pieces of Oak together and finished it off at 2×2 ¼. With that in clamps I drilled 3 holes in the table leaf 5/16 of an inch. Cut the Oak to 35 inches and attached it to the table holding it lower about 1/16 so not to interfere with the everyday life of the saw. I used T-bolts and let them in about ¼ inch.

This is were I got really lucky. The next step was going to square and straighten it to the table. The plan was to slide the fence over and use it as a router guide to square the oak to the table and parallel it to the miter gauge slot. My fence is dead on with the slot. When I checked it out it was dead square and perfectly parallel . Lucky or what.

I bought a length of superstrut at Home Depot for just under $20.00. This stuff is heavy gauge. Cut that to 38 ½ inches and attached it with ¼ lags and a piece of pex plastic pipe as a spacer. That did squeeze it a little so I added one at the end to keep it consistent. It will never collect saw dust with all the holes in the bottom and has very little friction points.

Next cut a scrap piece of wood for testing and adjust with a file and sandpaper till it all slides with no drag spots. That’s it. I took my every day sled and added a rail and tested it out .

The largest piece I had was 41 inches and it cut like a charm. I have an out feed roller attached to the back of my saw and the sled just rolls on that to keep it from falling off. I could make a bigger sled or make the rail longer and get even more out of it.

Some facts: At 24 inches of cut the sled is just reaching the end of the new slot so the whole sled is engaged in the slot. At 36 inches of cut 12 inches is still engaged and the first rail is just leaving the table. At 40 inches 8 inches is still engaged. 8 doesn’t sound like much but when in motion from start to finish it just slides through. This is going to save me a lot of time and aggravation.

Now this isn’t new I used this type for just about 20 years now and I’m sure a lot of you guys use it also so I guess this is for the lumberjocks that haven’t seen this type before. It is based on the sliding tablesaw style like the big saws that can cut 4×8 sheets so the rail/fence is forward. It may look dangerous at first but it takes little effort to hold the work piece in place.

The advantages are that sheet stock is easier to cut and the small stuff cuts as easy as the larger 2 rail sleds. This is a 24 inch piece.

This is also a LOT lighter and the view of cut is in front of you a little more so your not bending over the sled to line up the cut. I use the older ones to cut angles on by screwing a board on to it. This set up was used to cut some shelves and is a lot easier than the miter gauge.

I tryed those adjustable metal guides, I don’t like them much.

If you need to cut just a hair of a piece you can feel it hanging over the sled. My sled is 24 ½ inches wide, 23 ½ inches deep and the fence is 33 inches long and that’s only because that particular chunk of ply was that size to start but those dimensions work well. And that’s my-2-cents.

This is how I check my jointer for square after the digital tool tells me it’s square. I purposely put the fence off 5 degrees to make my point. It is possible to joint a couple of boards, slap them together on the bench and think that everything is square if you’re not careful with what you’re doing. You just might have one board bevel side up and the other bevel side down.

#1 I start by joining 2 boards and laying them on something flat like your table saw bed. Look at the joint.

#2 Next flip both over and check again.

#3 Flip one board and check again.

#4 Finally flip both over and check again.

If your jointer is not square it would have shown up on one of those checks. The reason for all the flips is to make sure you don’t have two matching bevels sliding together. Because the fence was 5 degrees out it showed up in the last check and that’s because I started out with the worst scenario being bevel up and bevel down. Now with that said when I mark the faces of two boards I want to glue up I still will joint them with one face against the fence and the other away from the fence for the best possible results and that’s my-2-cents.