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I have a small sled for small parts so I felt it was time to make a full size one. I wanted to incorporate allot into this sled so I started with having a good way to measure repeatable cuts without making the sled itself too big. I just slightly off-centered where the blade goes on the sled in order to put a stop block to the left of the blade that would go to 18". To get the most out of this aspect of the sled I made a 1" thick block for the table saw fence and can cut anything up to 35" by just adding an inch to my table saw fence measurement on the right side of the blade.

I rounded over for the places where your hands go on the back fence, staining it with a gun stock stain and finished the handles with 2 coats of wipe on gloss poly. I used the "bolt down" method for the back fence of the sled as I find this the most accurate way of finding 90 degrees to the blade. I put a 3" wide zero clearance insert made from hardboard that can be unscrewed and slipped out of it's space to accommodate straight cuts, 45 degree cuts, and various size dado cuts (1/4, 3/8, 1/2, & 3/4 inch) all with their own insert. I finished the sled off with miter fences that include stop blocks.

All hardware was purchased last year during a really good super sale Rockler was having while I got the nuts and bolts for the fence at the big box store and the rest was made from scrap material in the shop. A few other pictures:



Gallery

Comments

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Hi Nicky P,
I'm always impressed with the quality of your work. I love that you use a lot of scrap material, too. Great job!
 

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88 Posts
Very nice looking CC sled and that is a good design,should be very useful on the TS !
 

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I love it! I thought about doing a similar design, but I don't think I could make it fit on my saw. I have a Bosch 4100, and will probably have to do a crooscut and a miter sled separate. Just not enough room on the table top.
 

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818 Posts
You will enjoy that sled and the results that you will get to no end .
One of the best accessories for the table saw .
Nice job .

Klaus
 

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107 Posts
Man that is a work of art! Beautiful!!
 

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Very nice sled. I have a few questions about the ZCI.

1) looks like the base is 1/2" ply. When changing inserts are you not worried about eventually making the screw holes so large that they no longer hold the insert?
2) if you screw into new holes each time you change, eventually you will run out of holes (if you answered this way to #1). What then?
3) do you slide he insert out of the front fence and new one in the same way? Are the inserts 1/8" hardboard?
4) it looks like the insert is a tad lower than the fence when looking at pic 4. Is it flush with the top and if not are you worried about that?

Apologize for all the questions but I've been contemplating making a sled with ZCIs for quite a while now and these are the things that I haven't been able to figure out good answers for.
 

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Thanks for all the questions Matt.

1 & 2) when a screw hole wears out I'll move a half inch to a untouched spot with screw holes for new inserts.

3 & 4) I made a good dado . . . hardboard is flush and slides easily through slot in either direction.
 

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Thanks for the answers NickyP, kind of along the lines what I thought. I'm still contemplating a different way to hold down the inserts rather than screws though. I've thought about using threaded inserts but not sure if those would A) hold well in that thin of ply and B) screws small enough to go through the hardboard and recessing while still having holddown power in the inserts.
 

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Really great sled. Great work, well done.
 
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