How to Build a Table Saw Sled || Table Saw Cross Cut Sled

this video was sponsored by bespoke post [Music] hey welcome to another video in this video we're gonna have some fun let me tell you why a few weeks ago my buddy jonathan katz moses sent me this little piece of metal now it's not just a piece of metal it's this crazy cool fence stop doohickey basically you hook it onto a fence on your miter saw or crosscut sled and it stops things you know so you can make repeatable cuts this is by far the best designed stop i've seen anywhere on the market and i'm not just saying that because i like the guy i really believe that there's no deflection it works great the problem is it doesn't fit on my crosscut sled it fits on my miter saw fence great doesn't fit on my crosscut sled it's not designed to hook on there so i'm gonna make my own cross cut sled and i'm gonna attempt to do it without going to the store why well number one i'm lazy and number two i think it'd just be fun to try and make a crosscut sled just with whatever i have laying around in the shop now fortunately for me i have a lot of random amazon purchases and things so this will probably be pretty easy but you can watch me struggle through trying to make a crosscut sled and then you can get one of these there'll be a link in the video description and you can make your own crosscut sled so let's get to work i have a ridiculous amount of plywood scraps so that's no problem i'm planning on building pretty much the whole thing i have plywood i got enough here i could build like six cross-cut sleds so i got that figured out what i gotta find is uh a t-track this slides into a t-track to make it you know slide back and forth and lock down tight so i either have to find a t-track in here somewhere or i have to make one i know i bought some t-track at one point whether or not i can find it that's another question don't you hate it when you know you bought something like a year and a half ago but you just can't find it i literally looked everywhere i could think of in my shop and it wasn't until i found one piece but i think that's all i need so i'm going with it so this is much longer than i need but it's okay because it's aluminum so i can cut it down i don't even remember why i bought this but there you go a piece of t-track so in theory this stop slides into here the question is will it work because sometimes the bolts don't fit not all bolts fit all the t-tracks so we'll see here hey it does work okay so my plan is i'm going to mount this on top of the sled and then i can slide the stop back and forth so this will be the top this will slide back and forth and i just got to build the sled also in here i found a few of these little hold down clamp thingies so if i have enough of this left over i might be able to incorporate some tracks into the sled and add some little hold down clamps we'll see i had a general idea of the design of the sled in my head just from seeing other sleds you know in various places i wanted it to be made out of three-quarter inch material and of course that was at the very bottom of the pile but i happen to find a unused sheet of 4x8 birch pre-finished which is going to be great because the pre-finished surface is nice and slick which i'm hoping will allow it to slide on top of the saw a little easier so the first thing i did was cut out the base plate for the cross cut sled i ripped it down on the table saw and then because i'm lazy and didn't want to get out the track saw i just trimmed it down to size using the miter saw and wouldn't you know it slides around pretty good it does have a slight bow to it but i think once i get it all braced that will be taken care of the next thing i needed to do was find something to make my miter slot guide things out of i was looking for a piece of hard maple and after a little digging i found the perfect piece all right i'm at a crossroads like i said my original plan was to take this piece of t-track and stick it on top of the front fence so that i could slide the stop back and forth but i was digging around looking for some hard maple to do my miter little guide things and i found this thing 36 inch piece of you know extruded aluminum t-track top so now i'm like could i make this part of my front fence now the issue here is as you know the blade has to pass through whatever the material is can i just cut through aluminum on the table saw i know i can do it on the miter saw and i'd only have to do it once to get my initial you know line but will it destroy me and or my table saw i don't know should i just go for it [Music] i mean you only live once and you have 10 fingers so you might as well take a few risks so after deciding to go in that direction i ran my hard maple through the jointer to get a nice straight edge and then i cut down two pieces that will be my miter slot guide thingies i wanted them to be you know nice and snug in there but not so snug that there was any resistance they needed to move freely without racking left to right after getting them cut to the proper size i ran them through the planer to thin them down until they were just under the top surface of the table saw then because they were under and i needed to attach them to the bottom of the sled i needed to lift them up a little bit i did this simply by putting a few pennies in that miter slot just to raise them up above the surface of the table saw then i brought my fence over until it was the distance i wanted it from the blade for this i did 12 inches and then i added some ca glue to the top of each one of those hard maple miter slot guides then i applied some of the accelerator spray onto the base piece of the sled and making sure that that base piece was firm and flush against my fence i just laid it down and pressed until the glue was dry after a few minutes of rubbing the bottom of my sled like i like it a lot i flipped it over and my miter slot guides were securely fastened but not really securely fastened with the pre-finished ply i wasn't confident that they'd stay put so i drilled a few countersunk holes through each guide and i added some three-quarter inch screws to make sure that they stayed exactly where i wanted them okay so i have my miter guides attached to the base of my sled it's sliding pretty good i think it could be better but i'm also going to paste wax everything up and i'm not going to fine tune it yet because once i put those brace pieces on there's a little bit of a bend to the base of the sled and i think when i put those brace pieces on the front and back it'll straighten that out and that might actually make it run a little better so i don't want to adjust anything until i have that done so now i got to figure out the front and the back i decided to go for the aluminum fence i'm just going to cut through it with my table saw see what happens so but i'm also going to brace it with some regular plywood so it's going to be wood aluminum and then there'll be another brace piece on the front let's do it so with a loose plan in place i started ripping down plywood now i'm going to laminate up a few pieces of plywood together to make a nice inch and a half thick fence on the front and the back i'm just cutting down some pieces of three-quarter inch ply roughly and then i'll slather them in glue and clamp them together like this see i just said i was gonna do this and now i'm doing it because i don't want to let you guys down so after all my pieces were good and smeared with glue i put them in clamps and the only thing to do now was to sit around and wait for glue to dry so i did what i always do while i wait for glue to dry i played a few soulful songs on my tin whistle and i invented a few new sports for my future woodshop olympic games that i'm planning in the near future this one's called hover chair this video was sponsored by bespoke post bespoke post is a monthly membership club delivering a monthly box full of awesome top shelf goods from under the radar brands things like home bar stuff outdoor gear style and so much more they just sent me a box let's open it up and see what we got the nice thing about bespoke post is the flexibility you want to skip a month return or exchange a box pause your subscription or cancel altogether no sweat it's free to join and with no commitment it's also hassle free in this box i got this awesome damascus steel knife with a leather case i got this mini aging barrel so i can age my own liquor now and i got this cool bootleggers bottle to hold said aged liquor the lineup of limited run boxes is constantly changing so you're always going to get something new it's like you're just giving yourself a gift every month and because each box has over a 70 value inside you know whatever you get it's going to be good so if you want to try one of these cool boxes here's what you're going to want to do go down to my video description and click the link that'll take you to the bespoke homepage use the coupon code moth20 and it'll give you 20 off your first box now when you click the link scroll down to the bottom of the page it'll prompt you to take a little quiz this is going to help them tailor a box so you get exactly the type of things that you want couldn't be easier after a few hours of clowning around the shop my glue was sufficiently dry so i took my brace pieces out of clamps and started working on cleaning them up to get them ready for my sled first i ran each piece through the jointer to get a nice straight edge and to get rid of all that glue next i wanted to cut down my front fence piece now i wanted this fence piece to be the exact same height as my aluminum piece so that they you know nested nicely against each other so i ripped my front piece down so that it was exactly the same as that piece of aluminum this will also allow my stop to you know run smoothly without running into the fence for my back piece i also cut it down the same size as that piece of aluminum but i added a little bit of a thicker section where the blade was going to pass through just to give it a little more strength i've seen this on other sleds so i thought you know i'm i might as well do what the other people do i don't know so after tracing out my general shape i cut down my straight line with the combination of the band saw and the table saw and then i finished off by cutting my curves on the bandsaw this was a pretty rough cut so after the band saw i cleaned everything up over on the bench top oscillating sander here's where we're at i got my base plate done i got like my little miter alignment stick thingies on the bottom those are good to go so i cut out my back brace which you just saw i made this bigger part here because that's where the blade's gonna go so i just want it to be nice and sturdy since it's gonna be cut part way through there so this is gonna attach onto the back like this or the front whatever you wanna call it and then i cut out my other brace piece here which is going to go on this side and then my idea is that this extruded aluminum piece will sit right in front of that like that and then my stop will attach that i can move back and forth so my cut line is going to be like right here i can move that back and forth and then because i use the extruded aluminum that means that i have that other piece of t-track i think i can put some slots throughout here with those little hold down clamps to make this more multifunctional so i got to get all this attached on here hope the table saw cuts this extruded aluminum just fine i think it will and we'll get this thing done before i went ahead and attached my front and back fence piece i wanted to soften them up a little bit so i just ran over them with a round over bit on my little trim router and i sanded them by hand just to you know make them feel nicer and more inviting then i simply applied a small amount of glue to the bottom of each piece now this might have been pointless glue doesn't stick to pre-finished ply but i couldn't help myself i mean why not glue's fun so after clamping it in place i screwed it in from the bottom first pre-drilling with that countersink bit to make sure that my screw heads didn't stick out of the bottom and drag on my table saw and then i just sunk some inch and a half screws right up into my prefab fence piece once i was done with the back fence i did the exact same thing for the front fence now i wasn't too worried about it being perfectly square at this point we will fine tune it all here in just a little bit with my fence all screwed in place i flipped it over and it was really starting to look like a crosscut sled which is good because that's what i was making next i just needed to attach that piece of extruded aluminum i did this quick and simple just with a few screws right inside that track piece and voila it was sliding but it could slide better so i pulled out every woodworker's best friend a jar of paste wax and i lubed up the bottom like i was a cross-cut sled proctologist that was gross i'm sorry i just couldn't help myself after tastefully lubing it up i flipped it over and what do you know now it slides like a dream at this point we were ready to make our initial cut through the sled and the aluminum and like i said i had no clue how this was going to go so i very slowly just inched the sled forward waiting for a disaster and but what wha what it oh that wasn't that wasn't bad at all in fact i kind of kind of liked that just nice and clean who knew the table saw cut through that aluminum like butter i don't even know why i doubted so at this point you could be done we got a really nice functioning sled the last thing we'd want to do is double check that this fence is perfectly square with the blade now what i like about this extruded aluminum on the front is it would be really easy to adjust all we'd have to do is basically figure out where it's off and then shim on one side or the other to tweak that fence so there's a lot of adjustability in this which i like but i'm not done yet we could stop but why when we could make it way cooler some things i want to do i want to add some tracks to it so i can have those hold down clamps if i'm using you know little pieces of stock i don't want to use my fingers to hold it down so i'm going to add those and then almost all of my crosscut sleds after like a week of using them with a regular blade i end up ruining them because i put a dado stack in there and i just run it through and leave a big old channel and then you don't have the zero clearance anymore so i want to figure out a way that i can make this adaptable to either have a dado stack or a regular blade so that's what i'm going to do now let's do it actually before we do that i'm going to do what i said we should do and make sure the fence is perfectly square it was actually off a few thousandths of an inch so i just inserted some shims on the left side for shims i just used playing cards and then i ran a board through the saw using the crosscut sled and with a square i tested to well make sure it was square and it was perfect now to add our t-tracks on the surface of the sled now lots of people would probably just dado in a groove and drop them in place but that seemed way too complicated so i ripped down a piece of half inch ply that was the perfect dimensions to fit inside my sled then i grabbed my sled because i have a sled now and first i cut a nice flush end on one side of that pre-cut piece of ply then i just chucked that aside and i cut another strip this strip is going to go on the far right side of my saw and make up what will become the first of multiple panels that i will lay across the base plate of the crosscut sled you'll you'll see what i'm talking about here right now so i took that first cut panel and again using that countersink bit i just drilled a few holes and i screwed the whole panel in place next i cut down my piece of t-track into three equal pieces that would be oh about two inches shy of the internal dimensions of my sled this is really important i don't want them to go the full length or else i will not be able to get my hold down clamps in there or if i put them in there they'll be locked in permanently which means they could and most likely be in the way at some point i wanted to be able to remove them hence the fact that i'm leaving that little gap up towards the top of the sled so after cutting my first piece of aluminum i then slid my plywood over until it was perfectly flush against that t-track and i ran it back through the table saw cutting a nice little strip that perfectly fit between that t-track and my table saw blade now this strip is the most important strip in the entire top of the sled because i'm only screwing it in place that means i can remove it so when inevitably i run a dado stack through this sled and make a nice large channel i can just pull that piece out insert another one and i'll be back to a zero clearance little insert and not ruin my sled pretty tricky huh with my insert piece cut i slide that piece of plywood over until it's flush with the insert and mark out where i want my second t-track to land next i'm just gonna cut that strip using my cross-cut sled isn't it nice that we can just use the thing we're making to cut the things we need for the thing that we're making i mean i think it's kind of nice so after marking it out i run it back through the table saw and i cut another nice strip now this i can push all the way up against my insert piece the blade will eventually cut another groove there but for the time being it doesn't really matter that it's tight up against that then i drill some more countersunk holes and i screw it back in place then i slide my second piece of t-track until it's flush against that strip and i screw it down are you picking up on the theme here we're just pretty much gonna work our way across the entire sled until we got it all filled in with you know pieces of plywood and t-track and more pieces of plywood so after butting up our second piece of t-track we cut another strip and well we butt that against the t-track then we line up our last and final piece of t-track and we i mean it's no mystery we screw it to the base of the sled man this is getting really redundant then finally we just mark out our last and final piece of ply and using our beautifully working crosscut sled we cut that strip down and we just yep you guessed it screw it in place just like this then with all of our plywood and t-track installed the last thing to do was to slide those hold down clamps into the t-track and see how it looks i mean i don't know what you guys think but i think this looks like a pretty freaking cool crosscut sled and the final icing on the cake is that jonathan cats moses stop which will work perfectly in combination with this sled then before i could call this piece truly complete i wanted to add a little block right where the blade passes through that front fence this is just a helpful reminder not to put my fingers there i don't want to cross cut off a finger and voila we have a wonderfully functioning crosscut sled made entirely from crap i found laying around my shop who would have known well there you have it what a wild ride i literally had no clue how i was going to build this and it was completely born out of the parts that i had laying around and some small knowledge of how i wanted to put this together that being said i'm pretty stoked with this thing i think it's sweet i got these hold down clamps which are great because you know i can keep my fingers out of the way if it's really close to the blade which is awesome this extruded aluminum worked great and i know it's perfectly straight which is awesome the one thing i don't love about the extruded aluminum is it's not like a piece of hardwood where i'm gonna get a really nice crisp cut as like you know a sacrificial back piece but the cool thing about jonathan's stop is that it extends out it doesn't have to be flush against the fence like this it can move out i don't know probably an inch and a half two inches almost so i could very easily put a sacrificial piece of hardwood on here so i get nice crisp cuts over at this side of the fence and it's still gonna have plenty of room the other thing i like about this is that i did the top in these different sections so if one section gets damaged or i mess it up i can always just pull it out and throw another one in there and if i want to do a dado stack this little strip here can come out i can put another insert in that's wide enough for my dado stack and then i can put this one back in when i'm done so it's pretty universal it's amazing what you can build finding things around your shop now i'm going to link everything you need for this in the video description below but if you buy one thing here buy this j cats moses stop it's amazing it'll work great for the crosscut sled it'll work great for your miter saw vents you can use this all over the place and they're not that expensive i think they're like 35 bucks 40 bucks something like that so pick one of these up in the link down below now i gotta get back to building the boat blue

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 1,639,063

Keywords: crosscut sled, table saw sled, cross cut sled, table saw, table saw sled plans, how to, how to build a crosscut sled, cross-cut sled, crosscut sled for table saw, how to make a table saw sled, miter sled, how to make a crosscut sled, how to make a cross cut sled, table saw jig, diy crosscut sled, crosscut sled plans, woodworking cross-cut sled, best table saw sled, woodworking plans, shop project, how to make a cross-cut sled, tablesaw sled, diy table saw sled, cross cut

Id: U64_XKbc8sk

Length: 25min 46sec (1546 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020