Do You Hate Making Crosscut Sleds?

I am really excited to share a new tool with you that I filed a patent for that not only makes the five cut method obsolete but takes all the frustrations out of making a Crosscut sled as well as other Jigs and accessories you know I've always been obsessed with accuracy and like elegant Simplicity in tool design and that's why we've created things like the apron the dovetail jig and the stoplock they all solved problems that were either somebody had over complicated or released tools that didn't do what they said they were going to do now Crosscut sleds are like an undeniable necessity in woodwork it's most used jig I think anybody else who has one says it's the most used tool in their shop but they can be frustrating for beginners and experienced Woodworkers alike I still get frustrated by them now we recently did a poll on Instagram where 43% of the people who responded said they hadn't attempted one yet because they were worried about the fabrication process and more so worried about the five cut method and that was frustrating or confusing in fact this is my first cross cut sled you see there's a whole bunch of empty holes here which were all new attempts at dialing that fence in in fact it took me a few hours to do it for years it Dr me nuts that there wasn't a better solution it was something I thought about all the time and this is something I'm an expert in you know we have the top Google search for five cut method calculator over at CM tools.com I've done tons of sled videos I've taught this many many times but it's something that I still get frustrated about when I build sleds so today I'm so excited to announce we came up with a solution which is the cats Moses jig Square it is an elegantly simple tool design that is manufactured to the same tolerances as a stere at Square so plus or minus 3° which is over two times more Square than the max tolerance for that five cut method calculator that we talked about in our previous video so come on in let me show you how it works all right it has two fixed co- planer tabs and then an expandable one which you adjust with this really nice brass thumb screw here which allows it to lock into any curve from 008 in to about .24 in So what you do on a sled for example you raise your blade up and that curf that is left by your blade it can lock into it you can then clamp your fence to this big aluminum plate here and shoot screws from the bottom of the base of your sled which allows you to have a perfectly Square fence with no adjustment no five cut method and no frustrations in fact we even came up with this really Innovative sled kit that makes it a lot easier and we're going to build that in just a second here but I want to talk about maybe some of the other uses for this one of my favorites is the track saw so it fits into the curve of your track saw so if you need a perpendicular cut maybe of a weird shape with no reference that you're trying to cut something Square out of or you're just trying to conserve material this works great with a tracks saw and you can put it anywhere in your cut which is really cool it works for adjusting the fence on your miter saw so if your miter saw is just barely out of square this is a great way to do that we'll do like a short video on how that works here pretty soon the tabs are adjustable so you can actually move them into the middle here there's the new battery powered table and miter saws that have the smaller blades so if you have a smaller curve this would work great for that if you can think of any other cool ways to use this I'd love to hear this is so new that we're still kind of figuring out new ways to use it all the time before we get into building this really cool sled kit which I think is really kind of innovative takes some of the frustrations out of sled building want to tell you this is in stock right now it's not a pre-sale if we do sell out I'll put it on pre-sale I've already ordered the next batch so uh they'll be here in a few weeks there will be bundles with t track stop block the fence kits or you can buy them individually so pin comment description now let's build a sled when you're making a Crosscut sled the fences are the most timec consuming thing you got to clamp them up cut them up make sure they're flat square and straight so when I was developing this I was making sleds non-stop I made so many I lost count and I was having to Joint every fence cuz I didn't want to introduce any air from my fence because one of the problems is your fence is slightly bowed suddenly you can't tell if this is square or if this is out of square it's a whole order deal so I created a CNC program so I could rapidly batch fences I probably made 50 60 sleds and I got really fast I can do it in 10 minutes with this kit 10 minutes start to finish if you don't count dry time for the fences the other thing that's really annoying is I can never find those little 3/4 inch screws you need so you don't shoot through your cross cut sled up above so we included those all the hardware you need to make your sled in fact only thing we don't include is the base because it would be kind of ridiculous to ship this the rear fence the one closest to you is almost 24 in fence furthest away from you is 15 in you get two Runners all the hardware but that's not even the coolest part let me show you what is actually so cool about this kit and why it makes it so easy to get flat square and straight all right so here's what I came up with it makes this so easy these have six holes in them they're equally centered both length and and widthwise and they're all cut from the same sheet of plywood but the two outside pieces are chamfered on the edges which is good for dust when you're using your sled so I did that for you and what happens is because of these holes it forces you to flip one piece over so plywood always in you know they say plywood's flat but that's in like a square inch it is very very flat but over a big sheet of plywood it's got a little twist or a little cup to it and this forces you to flip them one of the pieces over which is going to force all those all those internal stresses in the it's going to equalize them and then what you're going to do is clamp it down flat like you see over here and it's going to ensure that when you glue this up it's super straight in fact let me show you all right so you have two pieces with no chamfered holes and you have two pieces with three chamfered holes and you want to make sure that there is a chamfer hole on each end you're going to flip those over we're going to put glue on now like I said you do not want to get squeezed out cuz then you just have to clean it up so this is how I do it I just go around the holes like this and then Circle back boom that's it put the piece over the top of it do the same thing piece on top just like that and this is where having a flat surface will be good all right now we're going to shoot screws in just the chamford holes so it's going to be three from each side these are inch and 3/4 screws so they fit perfectly so you want to drive them home pretty good but I've left this one misaligned here just to show you how good this system is at lining these up like watch this do you see that did you see that just come right in there and then we're going to go ahead do our other ones here I like to just hold it flat on my flat surface I'm going flip it like this same thing you want to make sure they're below the surface just like this and see I got a little squeeze out here I'm going to wipe that off before it dries same thing up here but look how perfectly flat that is already those screws bring everything in you can see just super flat straight and square and just to make sure what we're going to do is clamp it to our flat surface all right same thing with the small fence except it has three holes the outside piece on this one has two chamfer holes and this one has one you also will know those outside pieces because they have a chamfered edge we're just going to flip those over we're going to do the same thing we did before flip that over making sure the chamford holes are in the outside put it on its Edge just like that and this is where clamping becomes really important I'm make sure we don't have any squeeze out so you can clamp it on top of each other as long as you didn't put a lot of glue and you're not going to get a bunch of drips this is where I like to do my table saw Wing too and this is not even for clamping pressure because your screws are going to take care of that this is just to ensure that it dries as flat as humanly possible the screws are already doing most of the work but this is just going to ensure that no moisture or anything from the glue causes any minor cupping or anything like that and that's all you need to do just like that all right so these are the ones I just took out of the clamps I haven't done anything to these you could take your sandpaper and give them like a scuff sand this would also be the time if you were going to put tea trck in you would route or use a d stack to cut your groove which also is so easy because these are super flat but like look at how flat and square these are they're incredible in fact check this out this is the important fence your back one like it is dead flat absolutely dead flat so we're done we're ready to go make our sled I mean that with filming took two minutes tops so here we go let's go make a sled over the table so I'm going to show you how to adjust the runners all right now we're going to go ahead and put the runners on um this is again the base that is not provided you any piece of scrap these Runners they're designed to be slightly too big for a 3/4 in miter slot so you can dial them in but test them first see that doesn't quite fit in there but you don't want to go too much more than that you want it to fit kind of snug without any side to side play so the way I like to do this is with a piece of sandpaper I like to do both Runners at the same time and I like to put them sideways in my mitter slot that way after every kind of stroke I could test them and see if they fit so the way this works is and I don't want to block you where right hand is I like to put my finger at the end to keep it from moving I'll just take my block plane and shave it like this and don't worry if you go a little too far just put a little piece of blue tape in there to make them snug again I'll then check it oh look at that no side to side fits perfect that was just two strokes with my block plane and now we're going to go ahead and put these on so we need some washers so those are going to go like this you can use dimes or pennies or shekels or Canadian copcs I don't care but you want to basically elevate your Runner so it's just barely above the surface of your miter slot we're going to do that and put some super glue on them and then put our base [Music] on then I'm going to slide it out I'm not going to lift it up because these are tight so I don't want to pop the Super Glue off so I'm just going to slide it out here couple things you saw me do there is use a tiny bit of super glue uh because you really don't want to squeeze out because of course that's going to affect the fit of your Runners the other thing is I used my fence to just sort of make it Square to the runners so then I'm going to drill some holes and put those included screws into the runners and then I'm going to show you how to attach the fence and then Square it up with uh The Jig [Music] Square so now we're going to go ahead and attach our fences you notice I haven't taken the screws out yet and those are actually what you're going to use to attach it to your sled so remove those because you don't want to hit those with a saw blade you can give them a quick clean up just like just a quick little once over the corners are already chamfered so we're going to pull those screws out I'm going to attach the front fence uh cuz that doesn't matter and then I'm going to raise the blade and show you how to use the jig Square okay so it's jig Square time and one thing you want to keep in mind is when you raise your blade up you want to come this way far enough that you don't have a huge space in the back of your sled I like to leave about an inch between the back of my sled and my fence and so I'm just going to kind of put my jig Square roughly where that curf is going to be I'm just going to make a little pencil Mark to that first Tab and I want to make sure that my curve goes that far so you can see right here I've got a little pencil Mark that's where I'm going to try and bring my curve to when I raise my blade here so let's raise our blade and I'll show you how this thing works one thing to note that I almost forgot there is you got to take out your ring knife otherwise this is going to try and raise into your sled and it's not going to work [Music] all right now this is where it just gets so easy you're going to need three clamps and The Jig Square just drops in there and you saw I went backwards a little bit you have to make sure you have enough room but then check it out we're just going to expand this tab you don't want to crank on as hard as you can you just want to get it locked in there we're then going to take our fence right here boom and now I'm going to use two clamps on either side this is going to help in case you have any bow whatsoever this is going to help take any last Little Bend out and you just go like that and then watch this I'm just going to lift it up like this and I'm just going to put one clamp on and that's just going to keep the fence from put getting pushed out by the drill bit and I'm going to drill five holes on three on one side of the curve and uh two on the other [Music] just like that we have a super Square sled but let's test it I'm going to do a super lazy man's tea trck I'm just going to shoot it to the top of the fence and in case you don't know this called a vix bit it's a self-centering drill bit it's often used for hinges but it's great for stuff like this so uh not a promotion or anything I just really like them [Music] all right Mark cue the dramatic music let's see how she did five cut method calculator over cam tools.com 466 in side a459 in side B 5.83 inch offcut 23.75 in pivot screw distance move your fence by. 7 in less than 11 128 over 24 in let's ask chat GPT what angle that is remember our stated tolerance is 03 de three times less than before you can see light with a stere at Square what has an angle of 07 in in a run of 23.75 in Chad GPT says 017 degrees half of our stated tolerance that's crazy for a measuring device tool guys that's incredible so cool I you know what it's so funny I've tested this a 100 times and I knew it was going to work but I still was nervous there guys thank you for your support head over to cam tools.com we've got sled kits we've got bundles with tea trck and stop BL and of course we have the new cats Moses jig Square let me know any other uses you come up with down in the pin Com or down in the comments and guys I'm humbled by your support it's so fun doing this kind of stuff filing a patent with so cool we worked so hard on this and I'm really proud of this like really proud so thank you for your support I hope you love it as much as I do and uh stay safe and Shop have a wonderful [Music] day

Channel: Jonathan Katz-Moses

Views: 238,430

Keywords: woodworking, crosscut sled, woodworking tools, tool design, jigs and accessories, accuracy obsession, woodwork necessity, tool fabrication, sled building, tool tolerance, tool innovation, saw track, tool adjustments, table saw, miter saw, tool kits, cnc program, woodwork tools, woodworking jigs, precision tool design, diy sled kit, woodworking accessories, tool accuracy, woodworking solutions, sled square, jig square, katz-moses, katz moses, 10 minute crosscut sled

Id: oAHKoc4JQ5Y

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2024