Two questions in one post - crosscut sled

Betsy,

Try entering this in the search box “cross cut sled” (include the quotes) and adjustment so it looks like this- “cross cut sled” adjustment.

Lew

Check out this website garagewoodworks. I’m pretty sure he shows how he aligns his sled.

-- Joe

Well you could mark an arrow on your test board, make sure that it points the same face against the fence for each cut and then make a test cut, check for square, move fence a little one way, make another cut, check for square again. Did the light gap get smaller or larger? If it got smaller you are moving the fence the correct direction, larger and you need to move it the other way. If the light gap switches sides, you went to far in the proper direction and need to go back a ways. Hope that helps.

-- Ooo, er.

Oh it is also possible that the sawblade is not 100% in line with your T-track slot and needs to be made parallel. That will cause no end of annoying mystery mistakes. Then it’s a big pain in the butt trunion bolt loosening fest. Ugh, hope that isn’t the problem.

-- Ooo, er.

Thanks guys. Still not getting very far. Everything seems to be square and in line with everything else and still can’t get a square cut. I ripped a few boards and they come out straight as an arrow – just can’t get the cross cut sled to cut square. I’m not sure what I am doing wrong as I’ve made cross cut sleds before with no issues. Guess my luck has run out!

Will keep trying. I am persistent if nothing else.

Thanks again.

-- You can't get a hug from Facebook.

Someone posted this one up a while back…

http://www.thewoodshop.20m.com/five_cut_method_swf.htm

-- //FC - Round Rock, TX - "Experience is what you get just after you need it"

Maybe this helps.

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=183&t=11474

-- Fred

_FredG wrote: Someone posted this one up a while back…

http://www.thewoodshop.20m.com/five_cut_method_swf.htm

Did anyone look at the prices on these??

-- There are three signs of old age. The first is loss of memory. I forgot the other two!

I’m not sure if this is your problem but I drobe myself nuts trying to get my sled to cut square when the saw and fence would cut square.
If your miter gauge has any “slop” in it your cut will not be square, so if your sled runner has “slop” your cut will be off. By slop I mean side to side movement of the runner in the miter slot.

-- .

Betsy,

From what you described, your cross cut sled is off by a small fraction of a degree. If you measure your cut holding the square against the side of the board that you used to register against the fence and the sliver of light opens to the left, then the left side of the fence needs to brought back relative to the right side of the fence or the right end of the fence needs to brought forward. This adjustment will be a very small.

The way to look at it, is think of the plastic 180 plastic protractor we used in school. O degree to the left and 180 to the far right of the arc. 90 degree at the midpoint of the arc. The heel of the protractor is your fence. Hold your square against the heel and any thing less than 90 degree will result in a gap to the far end of the square.

I had to think about this some more - if the gap is on the left side of the square, the angle between the fence the the blade (miter slot) needs to grow larger (the angle between the saw blade and the left side of the fence opened up slightly)

I hope this makes sense to you.

Dalec

Forget using squares and all that. Just cut as long of a piece as you can on your sled, then flip it 180 degrees(flip the side facing the fence over so its facing away from the fence), then make another cut. After this, just measure each end, and whatever the difference is, is equal to twice the amount that your fence is off. I use this method, and have dead on square cuts at 24” crosscut capacity on my large sled.

-- Julian, Park Forest, IL

Dalec and Julian – both methods make perfect sense. I’m going to work some more on the sled today or tomorrow and see where I get. Thanks for the help. Never was very good at all the angle stuff in math class!

Dave – I thought slop might be my problem also, but my runners are as close to perfect as I think they can be. But that was my first thought.

Thanks again.

-- You can't get a hug from Facebook.