Flagship Table Saw Sled! Crosscut, Miter, Bevel, Dado, Picture Frames & More!

[Music] hi my name is James today I'm going to show you our new flagship table sawce sled and all the things that it can do like all cross cut sleds of course it does cross Cuts very well but this table saw sled is unique it's not just a Crosscut sled it's something we've been working on for a little over a year and has a lot of amazing design features and abilities for example it will make picture frames and you're not limited by size the front fence has a quick disconnect feature so you can make picture frames with the sides to it as big as you like and it's extremely accurate the Triangular guide that holds the sections of picture frame in place was cut using the rules of geometry it wasn't cut with a tape measure or a framing square or a speed square it's cut so that it's perfect the resulting angles that this cuts are not accurate to a degree or a tenth of a degree or 100th of a degree they're absolutely perfect they're spoton 45° so if you're designing or building an elaborate picture frame then perfect for the angles is exactly what you want another feature this usually reserved for dedicated miter sleds that we've incorporated into our Crosscut sled is the ability to cut miters uh this incorporates a digital angle finder and it cuts also perfect it cuts to the accuracy of the digital angle finder which is about to the 100th of a degree and you can see we checked this here against a kex stainless steel 45° Square this little square is accurate to the thousandth of an inch and it felt spot on but sometimes you want to cut a miter that's considerably larger uh than something short no problem here because the quick disconnect front fist fence comes off and this removable section of The Back Fence comes off and you're not limited by length you can cut a board just as big as you want to pick up and set down on top of your table saw you can use the clamping system to clamp the board down before you cross cut it and we have the exact same accuracy here we're going to cut a 45° here and we'll mate these up and check out the accuracy that they produce but you're not limited to 45 with this miter sled you can cut any angle that you like if you want to use really long boards though you are limited to something in between about 0 and 46° all right so we'll take a quick look at this we'll line these guys up we'll take a quick look at this up against another kex uh stainless steel square and now we have a feature that I love and I use a lot actually uh and that's the ability to do bevel Cuts miter cuts are great and that's pretty unusual but bevel cut cuts are fantastic to be able to do on a sled normally if you do that you've kind of ruined your sled but with the zero clearance inserts that go both ways you can easily set this saw up to cut bevel Cuts anywhere from 0 to 45 or whatever bevel Cuts your saw will make another cool thing with the zero clearance inserts is you just spread them apart a little bit wider and you can cut Doos you could cut rabbits or you could use the ability to cut doos and rabbits and you can cut a Tenon you can cut a perfect Tenon and that's really handy um if you build tables and I used to build a lot of tables it's nice to have a jig that you can quickly make an accurate Tenon with and there's nothing more accurate than of course a table saw sled so some like the tenons like that insert them and some people want shoulders on the top and bottom of that board of course this will do that too we could readjust the depth a little bit if need be and simply put it right back up against our stop that's a homemade stop I'll show you how to make one of those and save you a ton of money over trying to buy a commercial one cuz you might notice you don't even need top track on a sled like this you build your own stop and you don't need top top track and you've saved like 75 or 80 bucks and there you go so we've cut a tentin in all the way around and the cool thing about this is the shoulders are perfect the shoulders are all exactly in the same plane so it's going to come perfect against your leg and then when you're all done with that of course it just takes a minute or so to put the table sawce sled back together you just readjust the uh zero clearance inserts clean it off and you're back to taable sawce sled operation and you can do your cross cutting again all right let me show you how this Beast is made it's really pretty straightforward and what I have done is used 3/8 in plywood and you can check Home Depot and you can actually buy 3/8 inch subfloor plywood which is reasonably good quality it's not too bad it's not the best of course I've used Baltic Birch here which is absolutely the best but you can get a little bit cheaper uh plywood there in fact it's really cheap I think it's about $30 a sheet uh for a 4ft x 8T sheet um you can look it up at Home Depot I guarantee it I've actually looked up at Home Depot in about 10 different states just to verify but it's uh it's subfloor and it's 38 of an inch thick it's actually a little bit less than that but uh 38 inch thick plywood 30 bucks and then it takes about a half a sheet to do this so you only out 15 bucks of wood you know you can make two sleds you could use the rest of the wood for something else and so that's a good option of course if you have the funds the Baltic Birch is vastly superior it's much much flatter it's less likely to warp although you know it can it can warp and bend a little bit uh once the sleds all glued together it's not so bad but but basically it comes with uh there's a pretty simple set a pretty simple cut list I will have plans for this of course um and uh you know you just cut all the parts down the sled is 24x 32 but instead of making it exactly that size I've made the whole sled like one8 under in all those dimensions and that accounts for the curve of the saw blade so when you're cutting the sled down you really have zero waste out of that half of a sheet of plywood so you'll just cut the various pieces they're end up looking something like this and 38 in plywood is also nice because it makes for a very very lightweight sled and you only have a thickness of 3/4 which is basically like a normal sled uh that somebody would make with a normal 3/4 in piece of plywood except this thing is not solid top and bottom so it weighs a whole lot less this sled comes in at less than half the weight of our previous sled which is really handy so the first thing I'm doing is taking those little pieces pieces that I had cut and I'm just nailing this safety box together this ends up getting glued onto the back of The Back Fence it's got a little clear plastic top and that's where the blade will pass through and as you notice a lot of this plywood of course will have minor warps especially if you get the cheaper stuff from Home Depot but it really doesn't make any difference because the magic about something like this is that once you glue these things together and I kind of put the warps opposing to each other to kind of help flatten it out but the act of gluing it together and gluing it to a flat surface like I'm doing here to my assembly table you can also glue it together on your um on your table saw your table saw has an extremely flat surface but you see I'm clamping it to my assembly table here and that's ensuring that this piece dries dead flat so I have cut the pieces to size so we do want to make sure that we take the time to get them glued up together evenly so I've got clamps holding them side by side and end to end and that was the front fence now I'm going to cut or I'm sorry I'm going to glue together The Back Fence The Back Fence is segmented as you can see here and it comes apart in portions I'm just going to quickly put these pieces together and then I'll stand it up and I'll show you how it comes apart so it's got an empty section in the middle there and that's for our removable clearance inserts which slide back and forth and this piece I'm clamping together on the left is going to become the removable portion of the Back Back Fence which you might have saw in the preview at the very beginning there so I'm just putting it together so you can kind of get a look at it and the whole Back Fence is only an inch thick this way use three of these pieces it's just barely over an inch zero clearance insert plates will go here and they'll move forward and backward and they're replaceable and that way you have zero clearance everywhere and that's the removable section we got zero clearance in the base and that's what holds that together and we'll have a blind nut in the front so that's what that fence looks like and now we'll go ahead and glue that together now as much as I like glue we really don't want to put too much glue on this because there's going to be a lot of cleanup coming off the sides and we just don't need that for a project like this because we do need to make sure that these line up accurately um since we did cut them to exact size we're not going to Joint them or or cut them down later so they need to be perfect and they need to not have too much glue now if you like this table saw sled I have done something unique this time and that is we are selling the sleds themselves so the plans of course will be available just like all of our plans uh but this particular project we're going to sell the sled itself and the sled that we provide to you will need a little bit of assembly to come together uh because it does get flat packed out to you but basically you'll assemble what needs to be assembled and then you'll made it to your table saw and I'll show you exactly how to do that and that can be done in about 10 minutes so it's not a big extensive project um all of the important things will be cut on either laser or CNC machine so they're going to be exactly perfect it will come with Baltic birch plywood of course all the hardware every piece of Hardware that you see on the sled will come with the sled and I'll talk about that as the time goes on and it actually be on sale for the first couple weeks after I release the video so if you want a table saw sled and you don't want to build it you can consider buying this one it's going to be priced quite a bit less than something like the incor miter 5000 but it does quite a few more functions uh than that so you see how I've kind of clamped this thing so front to back there and we clamped it flat to the table as well and that makes sure uh that that uh it's all made it up nicely and this is the little removable portion so I'll glue this up next and I don't even want to let the glue come all the way to the edges here cuz it's just more to clean off this glue really has 3200 lb per square inch of bonding strength once it's clamped and glued so if I'm missing a square inch or two you know on this joint it's not going to make any difference it's so strong it'll never come apart and we want to make sure it's made it up nicely and that one is and we want to make sure it's clamped really well if you don't clamp these fences together nice and they're not perfectly tight you know no gaps in between the portions of fence then it's not going to function well in the sled it's going to be hard to square the sled so I have used a quick setting glue and after about 5 minutes I've taken it off and trimmed off the excess now this is another thing that I'm going to offer as an option and that's templates paper templates these paper templates are to help you cut out the shapes of the pieces if you need it for the curves but also to help you align the holes exactly for all of the screws that need to go in and hold the SL Leed together it's actually pretty easy to measure them and I'm going to show you exactly how to measure these holes but some people still don't want to do it and of course this is printed to a high level of accuracy so you can just simply overlay the pieces of the sled with the paper and Mark your holes and they'll be exact so it's an option uh it's not required it's not part of the plans most people don't want it but if you want it it'll be available for a small fee and so for example you might put this on the back or this is the front fence sorry and you can trace that out and if you hold the fence up on end this is a this quick disconnect feature of this fence means I'll need a couple of holes that go all the way through it for the bolts and the star knobs and you can use this to line up your holes you can measure it just as easy um but if you use this to line up the holes you just get that M it up perfectly to the fence and you just center punch it right there but I'm going to measure this one and I'm going to show you a technique for measuring it and then once we measure it we'll line up that paper and make sure they both are the same so we've got 9 and 3/4 in there and we'll just use this uh double square to make it perfect you can use any kind of a square there make it across the whole section and then I like to double check the measurement and make sure that it crossed uh AC cross the line perfectly then I'm G to get a thickness of this piece because I want to go to the center of the thickness and the piece came in at 720 for both pieces divide that by two and it's 36 so I'm going to set my calipers for 36 360 there you go and lock those down right there and then I'm going to hook that on one side and get a really sharp pencil and Mark it I know my hand is is obscuring the camera a little bit then I'm going to hook it on the other side use my same sharp pencil mark it again and those two should line up right there in the center and they do which is good and let's see how it lines up with this once I get it to the end perfectly I'm just going to go ahead and center punch right through the paper and forget that I even marked it down below and just see how those uh those two made up this is how you do it if you didn't want to measure and then we'll take a quick look and you can see there it is it's it's actually dead perfect right in my line so those work out really well so for the people who would like to have um templates that will help um the templates unfortunately don't come with the plans they are in extra charge I actually pay 10 bucks for the templates to have them printed in bulk and I just I sell them for 10 bucks they're $9.95 so I don't make any money on them and like I said a lot of people don't want them but I do have them for for those people who do want them but they are separate from the plans so you're going to see me use this drill press fence a lot and and I guess I'm going to designate mag switch As The Unofficial uh sponsor of this video mag switch makes this drill press fence and it makes my life so much easier in fact I'm I'm using a lot of Mag switch tools for this and uh I'm going to put links to some of these things down below so we're just going to consider them The Unofficial sponsor of this video um I like a lot of their stuff I think they do fantastic uh work um they really make shop uh the shop a safer place and an easier place to get your stuff done all right so I'm going to go ahead and use the template here instead of measuring since I have one and I am going to cut the shape of the front fence out so I'm going to use a band saw I'm sure a lot of you have probably seen my Adera chair videos and you can very very easily cut this out with a jigsaw I realized that a table saw fence is something that every new woodworker needs to have it's probably one of the first uh jigs or tools that you need to build and so a lot of you guys probably won't have a uh a band saw yet no big deal cut it out with a jigsaw it doesn't really matter what it looks like doesn't matter how ugly it is but you can actually still do a good job um and what whatever is not perfect you can just sand and I am going to use uh a sander like a belt sander for it this rigid oscillating spindle sander but if you don't have one of these no big deal just use a belt sander if you don't have a belt sander just put some cor Grit on whatever sander you have and just take a few minutes and sand it nice and smooth get the curves looking nice but it's just for looks it doesn't really matter if they're absolutely perfect okay we're just doing this to take some weight off of the front fence I'm going to go ahead and just do a small radius round over on this you could just as well sand this I want to eliminate any possibility of getting splinters from it since it is plywood of course Baltic Birch is so nice the PES are all even and uniform that that's not really much of a problem you can see the holes there that's why I drilled the holes first and then I will go ahead and sand it I'll just sand it using 180 grit and I'll use 180 grit for most of this project and I'm going to go ahead and put a shamer on The Back Fence the shamer is right at the very bottom you see I have the insert plates in place they're actually double-sided tape down so they don't move so I can get this shamer this shamer is going to act like a dust Channel and I'll point that out again when uh when it's assembled on the sled it's kind of a little place for dust to go so when you slide a board back against this Back Fence to cut it uh the dust doesn't jam up and prevent you from getting a nice flat contact with the fence so that dust channel is nice and it goes all the way across there including on those inserts and I'm just going to pull those off now and then I like to hand sand these now these things were cut on my CNC machine but you can also cut them by hand and you know the CNC machine that's probably also another kind of unofficial sponsor for this video I'm going to show you some clips of that either in this sequence or the next one uh the CNC machine is very nice it makes quick work of cutting a lot of these parts and here I am going to take that removable section and put a hole in it so that I can drill them together I can screw them together when we for the times we don't want it separated and I've measured that to be right in the dead center so you could flip it either way and I am drilling out the holes now for the zero clearance insert I just took my time I measured those holes accurately and you can do that as well you could get the templates if you need of course you could always buy the sled if you prefer that or you can just copy this video um I make it pretty straightforward it's a long video and there's going to be another part to it I'm going to try to um make this as as easy as possible to follow so that you you don't have to spend any money at all if you don't want to you see the advantage of that fence back there is that once I have that lined up I can just move this left and right then I can flip it around and move it left to right uh because these the the holes are the same distance off of either side I've made everything in this project that way where the holes are the same distance off of either side so you just get that fence set up once and it's good for the whole project that's kind of convenient and then I'm going to switch to this bit and use the fence again because the center of the bit is still lined up over the center of the hole and I can make a space for those blind nuts and I want to make sure the blind nut the hole for the blind nut is low enough to where it's buried in there we don't want it to stick out past the back same way with that side and when that's done we'll just flip the board around and we'll do the other side and that's it that's what that looks like and the blind Nots will go in there and the B will go in the front of that side so let's take a look here I will have to adjust the fence because this one's in the middle super easy to adjust the fence is magnetic you flip a switch move it and flip a switch back and the magnet locks back in place and we want to make sure this is below the surface too because we have material that comes against the front of the fence and we don't want it to be um pushed outward because of the blind nut and that right there works perfectly all right now this is the bottom this is a mockup that I have but I want to show you that the bottom of the sled the blind nuts that come through it that hold these zero clearance inserts they're going to come a little proud but it doesn't really matter because they're going to fall into the slot on the zero clearance in so it's not a problem so if you drill them a little deep and they stick up that's no big deal all right now let's put these suckers in I'll show you how that works we just Hammer them in about as far as you can go and then I put a screw in you know just if you get it threaded at least about halfway down then you can hit on the head of the screw and it'll continue driving that blind down until it's seated and the screw will come right back out they're both strong steel it won't damage a thing and then we want to check and make sure that it's actually below the surface so it doesn't interfere with anything and it is and then I like to put a few drops of CA glue somewhere around the perimeter maybe in these little slot sections where the wings were folded up and freeze those and that's going to prevent that blind nut from ever coming out now you might notice that the blind nut sticking through here is a little bit of a problem I can't quite focus there we go uh we don't want that sticking out proud because uh we've got to put our removable section of fence in there and it rubs and that's really a pain in the butt so you just take a file and I don't know 50 50 swipes with the file and that just uh stands that flat so that's no problem and then the fence will go back together nicely no problem at all right now I'm going to show you how to make these uh zero clearance inserts by hand I'm going to show you how to how to how to lay it out so what I have done is I've marked the center of those slots just got an exact measurement then I'm taking these double squares and I'm making sure that line goes all the way [Music] across and then I'll set my calipers to 1773 seconds and then I'm going to use the tail that comes off the caliper and I'm going to adjust that double square to exactly meet that depth now I was fairly precise here in getting to a 30second but it's really not that critical if you make it a little bit smaller or a little bit bigger it doesn't make any difference um your zero clearance insert May travel a little bit less or travel a little bit more it's not not a big deal um I did set it up for exact measurement and this is probably the most complex measurement in the whole thing and it's just to a 30second if you have a set of calipers it's super easy so I did use the double square to mark it that distance off of The Edge and that's kind of the center point of the first few holes and I checked it with the tape measure now the first hole is a slot that goes all the way through this is where the threaded part of the of the screw is going to go all the way through through I'm going to hold that on there I'm going to pound that on until I can see the marks from the whole bit from the whole round bit it's a forcer bit these things are pretty strong especially the small on so we're not really damaging the bit but we can see the curves on the bit I don't know if you can quite see it from this camera angle but you'll be able to see it in a moment and I'm going to trace that so this is going to be like the width of this drill bit I'm going to trace on both sides that's a slot that we have to plow out or you know drill out all the way across now I'm going to put the bit back in place and I'm going to use that bit to actually draw the uh the curve around there so we're using the tools themselves that are they're going to drill this out to help us mark it now I'm going to go with the bigger bit now this bigger bit represents a shelf the head of the screw goes inside of there and rests on the Shelf whereas the screw the threaded shaft of the screw itself goes all the way through to go into the blind nut the head has to rest on a shelf now you can see how that that those have made indentations on the wood and we're going to draw that on both sides get out to where that indentation is and draw that and we're going to do the same thing I'm going to put that uh that bigger forcer bit back in and just kind of twist it around you can watch me here I'm twisting it around um to make a curve so real simple and that's what it looks like we're just going to cut that out you got eight of those to do and they're not super fast it's going to take you about five to eight or 10 minutes a piece so that's it that's the slowest part of the whole project one thing we're going to do for those who want it we're just going to sell zero clearance inserts so if you just want to avoid this whole thing we can sell them to you but you should at least make a set it's good for you to make them good for you to learn to do some Precision work if you don't already know how many of you do know how but if you're new to it give it a shot You Know It uh it will increase your Precision increase your woodworking skill all right so we're going to first start with the small bit and we're going to drill this one all the way through remember this is the slot that goes all the way through for the shaft part of the screw now it's bigger than the screw by a fair amount by about a 16th so if you drilled it off a little bit it really won't matter the screw will go in and there's some play everything in the system has some play built into it so you don't have to have hyper accuracy it may look like it but it's really not needed so then we'll just take this forcer bit and we'll drill all the way across and I really recommend a forer bit here there's only two sizes you need for this whole project but I really recommend getting a forer bit if you don't have a set just just buy a couple of individual bits you can get cheaper ones at Rockler for like five bucks and you do have to have a chis chisel you don't have to have a set but you have to have a chisel these chisels are really affordable affordably priced of their narx these are some of the highest rated chisels made and they're really not a bad price you can get them from tailor toolworks I'm going to put a link in the description for them and even if you're a power tool woodworker you need a set of chisels if you don't have the budget right now no problem just go get any cheap chisel sharpen it up and you can do this but if you haven't bought a set of chisels yet and you have the money get a set of chisels get something like this NX it's a killer set really good starter set and it rated number one out of like 50 or 60 different sets so it's a it's a good set of chisels it's in the hundred something dollar range I don't recall the exact price uh but it's a really good value all right so Ed the Chisel to get it close and then I'm just going to take something like a popsicle stick or a tongue depressor and wrap a piece of 120 grit paper around it or corser and we're just going to kind of s sand that for a moment and it's actually pretty easy to sand those those Peaks smooth if you're really skilled at the Chisel which I'm not I really don't uh spend much time with it although I do have to use it everybody has to use chisels um if you're really skilled you may get it perfect right off the bat a little tougher with plywood but the Sandpaper maybe 1 minute or less and it straightens it right out and that's perfect that's all you need you don't have to be more accurate than that all right now we're going to drill the Shelf the key about the Shelf is that you drill it halfway through now you can do this with a handheld drill if you clamp the wood down but it is a lot easier with a drill press so if you have a drill press I recommend using it but it's the same basic technique you're going to drill halfway through the wood we want the Shelf at the halfway point there roughly if you go a little under or a little over it's not going to make a difference but you're going to Target the halfway point so the wood is about 3/8 so you're targeting about 316 since um no plywood is actually um a standard measurement they're all metric measurements this actually 9 mm so it's actually 4/10 of a millimet shorter than 38 but it doesn't matter just drill to you know half a 38 and you'll be fine so there you go you see we've got the Shelf started by drilling those out all along that line and now we're just going to go back to the Chisel we're just going to go back to our straight line that we drew and basically chisel off these Peaks if your chisel is nice and sharp which you know mine's not uh it'll cut this a lot easier but even so it's not bad and this doesn't have to be perfect you know your screw just has to slide back and forth and there's some play because that uh the gap on that shelf is actually wider than the head of the screw so you have some play all right now I'm I'm going to start on the center plate for the Bottom now if you have a DAT Blade Set up uh for your saw you want to get it out and cut a dado in this centerpiece the measurements are there in the plans it gets a DAT on both sides it's just a really shallow dat because it's going to hold the uh uh the TR trck but it's not um going to be cut the whole depth because You' got a piece of another piece of 38 in plywood on top and I'll show you what I mean in just a second so it was that easy and you if you don't have a dado don't worry about it we can do this without without cutting any dado Cuts so that goes in the dato cut then when the top board goes on you see that the t trck is now a little bit below the top board and that's what you want you can either be flush with it or a tiny bit below no problem but you don't want the TR trck higher there's another mag switch tool that holds that wood down when you're cutting those Doos so it doesn't rise up in in the middle that way the data was uniformly cut all the way through all right so I have drilled some holes in it and now I'm ready to go ahead and install the te trck so I did make a little mistake here um I actually meant to cut the te trck cut about an inch and a half off the t trck uh or two inches sorry off the TR trck so that it's shorter so I could get the bolt in and out uh this is my self-c centering drill bit it's a vix bit so we'll pretend like my tea track's a tiny bit shorter on one side it's going to be T tiny bit shorter on the side that's at The Back Fence but this uh Center board is completely symmetrical so you don't have to have decided which one's the back [Music] yet we'll flip it around we'll put the tr- trck in the other side same thing use the self-centering drill bit to drill out the holes first I usually like to put one hole put a screw and then I put the remainder of the holes in the remainder of screws the one screw kind of holds it in place while we drill the remainder of the holes so that's it all right now the important part so what I've done is on my table saw I have set up a straight edge going along the front and a straight edge going along the side and I've taken the time to clamp it down and make sure they're Square to this framing square now we know the framing square is not dead on perfect and that's okay it doesn't have to be but it's going to help this assembly go really fast and really accurate so pay attention this is how we put this thing together piece number one the bottom outside Runner goes on the left and then we put our Center board then the top outside piece goes on the left right there like that and this is the bottom right outside Runner and then this top piece and then we want to push that runner in so that it's perfectly flush with the edge and this is the top inside board goes next to the T trck and the other top inside board and then our two pieces of zero clearance insert will go there that's the entire sled that's exactly how the sled goes together it's really simple and if you have this setup on your table saw or any flat surface like an assembly table or whatever you can assemble this thing in about 5 to 10 minutes real simple let's take a look at it from the front and see you can see how the thing is hollow on the bottom on both sides so we've illuminated all that weight those outside Runners keep it stable and flat and running on the T table saw and that's what it looks like so that's the nice thing about this sled is it's very lightweight so the pieces are stamped if you decide to buy the sled and you have to do any preassembly um before you made it to your saw and you'll know exactly what pieces is what I only have two stamped there but they're all stamped actually we're going to use uh the quick setting glue here as well the speed set and let's go ahead and assemble this piece and see how it goes we're just going to do this in real time it's just going to take a couple of minutes you'll see so we'll put that piece on or glue on that piece and we'll put glue on this one that's the bottom outside Runner and that's the center board I'm putting glue on now but it just goes on the left side of that track and that track is what's giv us the position or the distance or the spacing that we need to make this just right and I put some on the this top outside board make sure that's tight against your against your straight edge and we'll put this on and it's got to go on that as well and then we'll slide both of those pieces back tight to the straight edge that's closest to me there that's Ryan helping me that's my one of my daughter's boyfriends he's uh fairly new to woodworking he's been with us for several months but he's learning fast he loves it and uh he he does really good work all right now we're going to go to the other side same thing the bottom outside Runner and the two outside Runners are identical and these two outside top boards those are also identical so you can't really mess up everything in this SL is symmetrical left to right so we get glue on those we'll flip this upside down and put this in place same way we're going to put it on the left side here first and then we're going to go ahead and let that uh piece there extend a little bit past the outside can't quite see it and I'm going to push it in snug with this board so that it's perfectly lined [Music] up all right now we have to do the top inside boards on both sides they're going to go just inside of that TR trck they're going to touch the T trck just like that and one for the other side just like that and the space that's left in the middle is the space for our zero clearance inserts we haven't cut the sled apart yet we don't want to cut that apart until later of course let dry for a couple of minutes and then we'll scrape some of this excess stuff off and then when it's fully dry we can sand it but you see how we've lined everything up perfectly that's important since all the pieces are cut to size so we'll scrape what we can and we're going to use these really nice gravity clamps to hold everything in place anything Works gallon jugs whatever you got but you do want it held nice and flat and tight giant nut like that that works fine and that's what it looks like from the front ah at this point either side could be the front cuz it's symmetrical all right over here I've got some plywood and there's our CNC it's over there cutting out zero clearance inserts and it looks like the bits dull cuz it's starting to shred the wood fortunately that Sands off very nicely very easy and here we go so that is all set now uh the holes are drilled but I'm going to show you that you don't have to have a drill press to put in the te- nuts you can see it's a little sloppy to start but it's really no problem everything is going to sand just fine the UT's going to go in just fine and if it's you know off center a teeny bit to the left or a tiny bit to the right it doesn't make any difference there's definitely some leeway for error in this sled and that's why I'm putting these in by hand to show you that the only thing we want to make sure of is that we get it deep enough so that the blind nut is completely below surface of the wood you can see I checked it there of course if you end up buying the lead from us all of these are drilled all the te- nuts are inserted all the complex work is done once again we're going to put a screw partway in in order to fully seat this teut and want to make sure that it clears it does good now we can wax the sled and it'll slide nicely without scraping the table saw we'll do the same thing here we want to put a little bit of CA glue to lock these blind nuts into place so that they never come out and cause a problem and a little bit of spray of accelerator we'll seal those in that's half the sled we'll flip it around and do the other half when we're done with that we're going to sand the sled down so you can see putting things in by hand that's no problem I also like to sand the corners a little bit and the stamps any stamps that are on it when you if you decide to buy the sled they'll sand right off no problem and because we are using plywood I typically just do 240 grit because all I'm trying to do is smooth it out uh get the little bit of uh dust flaking or chipping off of the sides and gets it nice and smooth and gets it clean and we're going to go ahead and wax it this is going to be the first of a couple of coats of wax I like to put a couple of coats on the bottom just to make sure this thing slides well I'm not going to put a finish or Lac or anything first I like to start with wax I want the wax to penetrate the wood and uh give us a good coat and a sealant that way okay if you remember I said that this project you do not actually have to uh cut a dat if you don't want to or you don't have that ability and I'm going to show you what I'm talking about we have a sled mockup here this is this is a sled half that we mocked up for doing some calibration work and you can see that the t trck is actually taller than the plywood itself no big deal it's actually point4 millimet taller I'm just going to take some rough sandpaper 40 grit Works fantastic for this we'll take the t- trck flip it upside down we want to do the bottom side of the TR track and we're going to sand it it just takes about 2 3 minutes uh maybe 5 minutes at most to sand off 4/10 of a millimeter you just want to sand the whole thing until it's nice and uniform and silver and check it and if it's not quite there sand it a little bit more now you got to take that anodizing off and just get a little bit into the surface and we're going to put it back in here and we're going to check it and see if it's a good height now and you can see that it is it's perfect so that's all you need to do if you don't want to cut the dado in that bottom center board and since we didn't cut that dado in the bottom center board it's now critical uh to position these in the right spot and I'm going to show you how to do that so they need to go exactly 3/4 of an inch away from the edge and it's got to be uniform all the way across and that's simple we have a tool for that that we're going to put on the SL sled later and that's our miter bar that goes down below it's exactly 3/4 of an inch so we're going to go ahead and just set that in place and clamp it down I like to kind of clamp it Loosely a little bit at first and then just tap it back and forth and um check it put a straight edge up against it and make sure it's exact and we can check this here with our uh double square and we can see it's perfect all the way across it just takes a second or two to get this thing set up and that is your guide for the TR TR once again I'm installing a full length of TR trck here when I should be uh installing one that's a couple of inches shorter but no problem uh you'll see when the sled's all done I did pull this back out and I shortened it to the right length so we're going to use our same self-c centering drill bit I like drill one hole in the middle first put a screw in and that gives us a nice firm hold and we can drill the remainder of the holes and then install the remainder of the screws and then once we're done with one side we will flip the board around because of course it's symmetrical uh just double check it there and it's perfect still good we'll flip the board around and we'll do the exact same thing to the other side all right so once we have our sled put together we can insert or put the uh zero clearance inserts in and these are the screws for it it's qu x 20 and 7/16 inch long you can use a socket head cap screw which I kind of prefer over Phillips uh or you can get Phillips sometimes sometimes it's you can only find one or the other and I just I like these ball hex drivers um I'll put a link to these in the in the description a lot of people ask me about these it's just really nice to use a screwdriver here instead of an actual allen wrench they don't have to be straight up and down in there but this is how they operate pretty straightforward got a lot of space in the middle there so you can put D or whatever all right looks like now we're making a determination this is going to be the front of the sled it was symmetrical of course up till this point but now we're going to go ahead and mount the front of the sled here the front part of the sled is the part that's away from the operator it's like a car right you push the thing forward forward onto the table saw that's the forward the front Direction like a a car so that's the front of the sled the back of the sled is the opposite side that's the side nearest the operator pretend like you're the driver sitting on top of the sled it's easy to see what's the front and what's the back in that scenario all right so we just put that in clamp that down now one thing I do want to do so that I can make some careful adjustments to the back of the sled when I go to uh um install The Back Fence and I go to square it perfectly to the saw I need the whole thing very stable more stable than what these clamps will provide so I'm going to put some screws in temporarily once the sled has been installed and squared fully on the table saw then we'll just come back and take those extra screws out because they're completely not necessary and then we have our quick release fence all right so we're going to put this together I do have a knob for this um I don't know where it is so I'm just going to put a screw in here for right now and we're going to line it up now it this is also symmetrical it's the same distance on the left as it is on the right away from the edge make a little Mark once I have it centered so it's easy to go back to and we're going to put some clamps just put them lightly at first and get it lined up just right we do want to make sure the fence is square up and down perpendicular to the uh to the sled base and we want to make sure that it's flush with the outside here for starters and once everything is all set set then we can clamp these down a little bit tighter and then we can start with some screws so we got to get this screw in a little bit past that um removable section and this is going to be the screw on the far right side remember this Back Fence has screw on the far right side and we're going to put a screw in on the far left side but you know a couple inches away from that side so I've pre-drilled them and now we're installing the screws and that's it we're just going to start with two screws because we're going to apply the five cup method to square this fence to the table saw blade and once we check and get a proper Square we're going to need to remove that screw on the left and adjust the fence to get it perfect and here's how we're going to set the miter bars I have a specific distance for the fence I don't remember it now but I'll I'll remember it a minute and I'll call it out for you but it has to be a specific distance from the fence this is how you will install it as well um but what's important first is to get the miter bar set up now this is really critical um you're going to use these set screws they're Steel Set screws and put a little bit of Teflon tape on the set screws and that's going to make it so set screws don't rattle out with the vibration of the saw they're kind of held nicely in place this Teflon tape is something you might use for plumbing for example so we're going to drive it all the way forward to the Cup end of the set screw right there and that's going to stick a teeny bit out that side so you can see this miter bar Wiggles just a little bit from left to right in the slot and that's because everybody's table saw slots are just very tiny amounts different so they always make the miter bars a little bit small so we're going to continually adjust the set screw until it gets a perfect fit and the miter bar has no wiggle left to right and we're going to do that with each of the set screws that goes in there we want no wiggle for any of them but we do want it to slide so you can't have them too tight or the miter bar won't slide forward and backward this is the most critical thing that you can do to ensure that your table saw squares and stays Square you cannot get your table saw Square to the blade um because it will move if you don't have these in perfectly you need to take your time with the two miter bars and these set screws and get them perfect no wiggle make sure you put Teflon tape and you make sure you have no wiggle for any segment once you've done that and you install these into the table saw sled your table saw sled will Square very easily and it will stay Square for life so this is a really small um uh thing but it's really really critical it probably takes four or 5 minutes to set these up you know 2 or 3 minutes each not not that long at all but it's very important and here we go so I've got it fitting perfectly and there's exactly no wiggle no movement you can feel it very easy you would hear the rattle if it moved and it slides nicely you have to do that to both of these all right once that's done uh for my table saw the depth there I've got to put a penny and a dime together because I want that to stick a little bit above the top now I like to use a miter bar that's just a little bit shorter than my sled this a couple inches shorter than the sled on each side that wa never gets in the way when I stack it and store it some people like them a little bit longer but this is just what's uh convenient for me so I've measured it on both sides there I have my fence set exactly here we go there it is at 15 and 7/8 that's the dead center that's so that curve slices this uh sled exactly in half with two equal portions on each side that's important all right now we'll put a few drops of this CA glue on not too much cuz it's going to get out and get all over your saw and then you got to scrape it off but you know enough to where it's going to hold nicely and then we're going to set this thing in place kind of set on side down and just keep pressing it snug against your fence and line it up kind of with the front of your table saw pick a point in the front to line it up with and that's it hold it down right there I don't like to spray accelerator here cuz I like to have the ability to move it just fractionally if I have to um instead I'm going to put some weight on it some gravity clamps as it were a giant nut and a weight try to get those right over the miter bars if you can and let it sit there about 5 minutes see I glue is pretty quick then you can lift it right off all right now we want to set these guys in permanently so we're going to drill and screw them in so same thing we're use this self-centering drill bit again and of course the more people you have putting these thingss in the better and we'll put the screws these screws can be a little bit bigger because we're going through two pieces of wood instead of one which is nice but that depends on you know what tables you got I'm just going to kind of clean off any of the CA glue that might have spilled over on the edge it scrapes off of this aluminum fairly quickly then I'm going to go ahead and wax the miter bars but I'm also going to wax the whole sled again remember it had one coat already this is going to be our second and final coat for the sled so it's going to be smooth and stay smooth for a nice long time every few months depending on how much you use it you probably need to wax it again uh it doesn't really need waxed in here because it doesn't slide on the table saw but we do do have to put it so that it uh it it you know lets moisture in and out equally you want to finish every part of it equally that's important and you saw the sled slides perfectly so we're going to go ahead and make our first cut all the way through the sled and there it is nice and now it is time to square the taable sawce Leed we're going to use the five cut method it's a very popular method I believe it was invented by William ing he's a YouTube woodworker he has a school he's he's a brilliant woodworker he has fantastic ideas and so follow along here I've Marked One and I've rotated it clockwise then two then three then four and finally five this is going to be the final cut so what we're going to do is we're going to just trim a little bit off with each cut so that's the first cut on number one the I'm going to rotate this piece clockwise so that number two is facing the blade and I'll take a little slice off of that and we'll rotate it clockwise so number three is about to be cut by the blade and we'll take a little slice off of that and we're going to continue in this fashion until we get to the end and number four and this last cut finalizes is number four and we're going to cut this one about an inch or so wide because the piece that's off cut there the 5 + 1 that's the piece we're going to take measurements on and we're going to you use the data that comes from that to calibrate our measurement I want to Mark a at the top and B at the bottom that way I know which one is at the top end which one's at the bottom end we're going to take calipers you got to have calipers here if you want to get it super accurate and we're going to measure this guy and looks like we got 1.6 295 and we're going to measure the other side and I've got 1.62 so we'll write those down and here's the five cut method so you guys want to go check out William in's sled video I'm going to put a link to it below and you can see how he does it so this is the formula so the error per inch is what we're attempting to calculate and it's really pretty simple we're going to take the measurement we got from a and subtract the measurement we got from B then we're going to divide that by the number of cuts around the circle that was four Cuts then we're going to divide that entire thing by the length of the board we used to make the five cut method with and that's going to give us the error per inch of our table slce sled all right so the data we had if you remember a was 1. 6295 hopefully you can see the nine there and B was 1 620 make that nine a little more legible I'm going to take a photograph of this board at the end so if you want you can get a screenshot of it so you can apply this five cut method to uh to anything that you do works for any type of sled all right so the error per inch is going to be simply I'm going to do this one little piece at a time a minus B of course which is 1. 6295 minus 1.020 that's going to get divided by the number of cuts of course and I'm just going to do the top part here first use the calculator and 0275 so 0.0275 that's the difference 0.0275 so it's 2.7 hundreds of an inch difference in those two pieces after being cut around that Circle five times or four times I'm sorry and so we divide that by four that's the magic of the five cut method is it magnifies the error to make it easier for us to see if we just made a single cut it would be very hard to see but when we magnify the error it becomes more visible when we divide that by four we see in actuality we're only 0.0 00 6875 or I rounded up to 0.0069 I want to divide this by our board length the length of this board that I'm writing on right now because that's important because that's going to tell us our error per inch that 0.69 that's the error for the whole board and the whole board is 12 in long so our error is really only one 12th of that number so we'll divide that by 12 so that divided by a 12in board and I'm and I'm I didn't round here I'm leaving the whole number in the calculator each time divide that by 12 and there it is that's point 00005 that is 510,000 of an inch I'll leave the seven there because I should probably round that up to 61,000 that's pretty accurate that's 61,000 thousand of an inch off and that's just by you know trying to keep everything square and neat and tidy but you know what that's uh we can get more accurate than that but I'll make a little note here that's about 6 10,000 of an inch off uh for each inch of linear cut which is really really accurate but the magic of the five cut method and the whole system and how it works uh means that we can adjust the fence so I'm going to write a fence adjustment here and and we can dial that in even tighter now you don't have to if you got a wonderful number like this you could just quit after all you know we're dealing with wood not metal but I like to start as accurate as we can all right so that's the number that we are off and we multiply that times the length of the fence over that whole length of fence we're off by a larger amount let's see what that amount is multiply that times 27 and the link between the two screws on the fence basically and that's 0.015 so we're 15,000 off so if that fence was moved 15,000 of an inch everything would be dead on zero so now we have to wonder do we move the fence forward or do we move the fence backwards and I'm going to write a note here to explain it or to uh for you to remember if the number is positive of course my my camera fell off the bottom there if the number is positive that number there if it's a positive number then you have to move the fence backwards towards you towards the operator in order to get it correct if the number is negative you can probably already guess you have to move the fence forward the opposite direction in my last video I kind of explained the mechanism behind why but this video is already so darn long I didn't really want to bore you guys but that's it that's the five cut method that's an important way to do this you could just use the square and square it and that's close enough for probably 98% of your Cuts but if you want it perfect and you want to make picture frames and you want to do you know all the amazing stuff that this sled can do then you probably want to take a few minutes and square it up so here's how you do it so I've got a little board that I've cut to a point and I'm going to push it up tight against the fence and I'm going to put a couple of C clamps in it so it doesn't move now I know I'm going to have to move that fence and remember I've got to move it the number is positive so I've got to move it backwards towards me the operator on the left side I ended up putting a couple screws in it okay so I've got to move it backwards towards me like that but I've got to move it by 15,000 remember that was the error that I got so 15,000 so you get a feeler gauge and if you have one that's 15,000 is great if not then just add two of them up there's 3,000 and there's 12,000 point3 012 3,000 and 12 12,000 together is 15,000 so we're going to put those together and we're going to set them against the fence and we're going to push the fence tight against there see that fer gauge has now bumped that fence back by 15,000 so while holding it tight I'm going to clamp the fence in place I'm going to make sure it stays Tight cuz I'm going to check the feeler gauge obviously before I put some screws in and we can't use the old holes because it'll just cause the fence to move so I do have to drill some new holes if you ever end up uh filling up all these holes no problem you can uh Drive some toothpicks and some glue in and drill a new set no big deal if you have to move your fence two or three times that's it I held it nice and snug had to move that clamp to get one more hole here watch where you're putting these holes too right you don't want to drill one through your zero clearance insert that has to move that wouldn't be good I guess you'd find out in a hurry and then you'd have to move it and change it but there we go and we can see that our our 15,000 there is nice and snug and tight there just like it should be and we have successfully moved the fence back by that amount so now it should be dead square and I did go ahead and run run one more check on it and it was um I think it was about one uh 10,000th off or something like that but it the it was so insignificant that it's not not even worth mentioning but you should check it a second time in case you made an error all right now I'm going to put this on this is a little safety block so that uh when the table saw blade comes through the back it doesn't uh it doesn't get your hand it'll come into here first and it's got plastic on the top so you can see the blade coming through and we'll just take the the uh the plastic liner off the bottom of that and glue that in place go a couple of sprays sometimes the spray fogs up the the the plastic a little bit so if you don't want to do that you can just uh put a little bit of weight on it let it sit for a couple of minutes and it'll be just find that way too and then we want to put it in place so it's got to be above the zero clearance inserts and the measurements are such that it that'll work out perfectly anyway it'll come right to about the top of the fence and be above the inserts just like that and we'll spray that and that's good to go if it ever falls off you can spray it again uh I've already had a problem with it falling off um if you put too little glue I suppose it could it's just there to keep you from putting your hand there all right now I'm going to put the back zero clearance inserts on and that's a big advantage that this uh sled had over my old sled is that uh it's zero clearance on the base and the back which is kind of nice okay remember we had put some extra screws into this front fence in order to keep it stable while we did our squaring because just the two um the two t-bolts and the star knobs don't hold it quite strong enough for that but you can see that works good it's a quick release it's always best if you're going to take that off if you leave the fit the the sled in the tea trcks then the sled can't move at all if you do take it out like that it's fine you just may wiggle a little bit on you but if you leave it in the te trap it's just fine and there we go so the last thing we want to do and that will wrap up this half of the video is to go ahead and set the zero clearance insert to the blade so I've got a 1/8 in uh piece of wood that I've cut there a little shim and I can put that in one side and the blade in the other if I don't want to cut a shim I can just move the sled forward and and measure it to the blade on both sides and we'll do do the same thing with the zero clearance insert at the back use the shim or I can simply move the uh sled forward so the blad's in that spot and do that we'll tighten these up at the back as well we want to put these all in hand tight we don't want to use any Machinery to drive these down because they'll put a dent in that shelf and that's not good so there we go that's all set and there's the sled so I have another half to this video coming out where I'm going to show you how to make all of the fancy parts that turn this sled into a miter sled and a dato sled and a picture frame sled and all those other things so hopefully you'll stay tuned that's uh that's going to come out tomorrow and if uh this has already been out for a while then it's just the next video in the sequence it's a two-parter and it's a long video but it shows you detail step by step exactly how to get it done so just a quick recap of all the things it can do and that's about it thanks for [Music] watching [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] sh

Channel: Kings Fine Woodworking

Views: 1,129,443

Keywords: ultimate table saw sled, best table saw sled, crosscut sled, dado sled, removable insert, table saw sled, perfect crosscut, crosscut jig, woodworking table saw sled, woodworking cross-cut sled, build a table saw sled, crosscut, cross cut sled, miter sled, how to make a cross cut sled, how to make a cross-cut sled, table saw sled plans, 5 cut squaring method, sled, small table saw sled, zero clearance insert, cross-cut sled, table saw, sierra de mesa trineo, 5 cut

Id: n2jiuCYc3_s

Length: 70min 43sec (4243 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023