# TS sled when blade is at 45 degrees



## stevek (Jan 8, 2008)

I have a question about safely making 45 degree edge miters.

I made a small table saw sled for normal crosscutting jobs. Most of my projects are small, and I routed a tee-slot for clamps on the sled, so my fingers stay well away from the blade. The sled has helped my accuracy, and it feels a lot safer.

I'm thinking about making a sled in the same fashion to use when I tilt the blade to 45 degrees to make miters, like when making a box. I have a delta contractors saw, with the blade tilting towards the right. Is there any safety issue in using a sled, when the blade is set to 45 degree angle?

Thanks


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## Betsy (Sep 25, 2007)

Steve - I use a TS sled all the time for miter cuts. It's quite safe. There are a variety of styles of sleds. I use my sled that I also use for general cross cuts. It's very accurate.


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## gizmodyne (Mar 15, 2007)

Just design your sled so that your hands can't go near the blade. Make it higher where the blade goes up. You can also make a miter sled with the support fences set at 45 so that the blade is straight 90 and the pieces are set. Then you can cut matching miters. I believe this is the preferred method.


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## stevek (Jan 8, 2008)

Thanks for the quick replies!

Would you use the single runner design, where the cut-off would fall on the TS table, or the double runner design where the right side of the sled would carry the cut-off past the blade?

I seems like with the blade tilted to 45, there sure is more chance of the cut-off getting trapped when it's cut.

Steve


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## GaryK (Jun 25, 2007)

I like to cut with the cutoff under the blade. That way it will always fall away from the blade, and
not land on top of it.


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## LONGHAIR (Dec 16, 2007)

GaryK is quite right about getting rid of the off-cut piece. Even small pieces can be thrown by a spinning blade.

Also (since you mentioned in the original post) the intent of this is precision edge miters, I would rough cut my parts close to size and then cut the miters. You will get a much nicer cut if it is just a light trim. You really don't want big pieces falling anyway.

I built a rig one time when I needed to cut a lot of little cubes. They were 3/4" basically square, angled on two sides, trapeziods really. I started with 3/4" x 3/4 stock and was cross-cutting the slight angles. I built a small three sided channel, like a gutter I_I, it was 4"-5" wide and about 6" long. I clamped it to the rip fence and used the opposite vertical face as a length stop. This left a 4"-5" wide channel between the blade and that fence. I clipped a small blow gun (air nozzle) to the fence, blowing at the cut-off pieces. Cut them with a cross-cut sled or miter gauge and when they drop, the air blows them out onto the outfeed table. You can cut dozens of parts this way w/o stopping between cuts.


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