Tablesaw Crosscut Sled Featuring Microjig Matchfit Dovetail System

hey folks Chris you know with criss-cross crafts I have built me a sled crosscut sled look at all the different things on this thing I can do this is just the beginning you want to see how I built it I wanna see some of the accessories that I've already made for it I want to see how I put it together might inspire you to build your crosscut sled I dare you to outdo me all right hold tight and watch the video see what you think well no good crosscut sled would be anything without good runners I know I could have used ochre or walnut or some other hardwood as my Runner but I chose these Kraig aluminum track runners the 30 inches long and they have lots of screws for adjustment so I can really tighten that thing in and get that thing perfectly zeroed in the slide so there's no slop another thing is I like the length I like the fact that they're aluminum so they're not going to shrink like a hardwood runner will and the friction is going to be minimal and if things do occur I can always come in and readjust these as needed and you can see that's what I'm doing here and adjusting these a screw by screw going down the line making sure there's no slop in no places where it catches and just you know overall making sure the fit and finishes well and it takes a little time but it's well worth it in the end if you can get these down in with no movement side to side it really makes a difference in the quality of your slab so you can see here I'm just back to the original letter just making sure getting everything down yet [Music] all right now we're off to the races the sled races you see I'm milling a groove in this essentially this is a half inch diameter 14 degree dovetail bit I'm currently using the klingspor bit for this love this bit good sharp carbide very thick carbide saw they usually get good life out of this bit so I'm milling these grooves out about every four inches on Center into this Baltic birch I chose Baltic birch just simply because it's so stable and it's got so many layers that it does give you that extra benefit of the stability and rigidity that you need and so I'm still milling and it was about this point I started having problems pushing the piece through me but struggled and checked and couldn't figure out what was going on but I pressed on and I'm just moving the table saw things back again making a lot for this and you see is more and more grooves this thing is full of those dovetail but you got to have them as you have quit limps or what that looks like then I move since back and I'm back at it again keep blowing that port out no one there's something creating a burn in there it's it's it's hindering my progress so I'll finally get in there digging any look at it a little more carefully here well that was a some debris blocking my elbow on my bust court underneath there little it's got up one of the one inch hose coming up and something I've gotten in there and blocked it out but anyway so here we are taking it all apart cleaning it out getting it all over the Brio they're making it right figure out the problem too little too late but you loose to say there's the last one and it is all gritted out we're ready to go [Music] and now I'm off to cutting some of the dense parts I'm double thickness in the fence that's gonna be on the backside of the sled and I'm using a single layer on the bat on the front and by front and then the part gets away from me and so that's literally every clamp I had that was small so I've got them all laid out for the plenty of glue on the two pieces that I am together using this little corner block stone make sure I stay sort of aligned this is anything me help you get is a benefit and then I start to clamp process again this is all the clamps I had in that small size I've got my bling on there after the glue dried I'm kind of cleaning up that edge so I run it through on one side move the fence in a little bit and then run it through on the other this gives me two nice clean straight for their little edges and so now I'm ready to milk running and so I'm too cheap and too poor to have dimes or really good washers so I threw some pennies and this Lots to raise those up and I'm kind of dry fitting this first don't make sure everything's a little bit and it looks good I set my fence at about twelve inches and that gives me the spacing I needed in side to side and so here we are I'm kind of just again making sure then it's going to right and I'll be right laying it out and then making some marks just for reference and here I'm using some CA glue on the runners now I did lightly stuff they used to get rid of any oil debris dirt on there and put the glue on the runner and spread a little accelerator on the back now it's just a little bit of weight time and you can see I was playing thumb war give it a little time to cure with time to dry and with that accelerator that CA glue does with so I'll flip it over make sure everything's good and then screw it in you can see I'm using the VIX bit here and make sure everything's nice and centered so it doesn't get if the screws don't go in sideways with create problems about you know K Wampus and more screws more time more but but that's what you got to do to build it right so take my pin easy I don't put them back in the bank later my daughter never missing mine her piggy bank so that worked out pretty well and now it's time to create the data guru if I do have my dado stack in there and I decided if I was gonna build a sled I wanted it versatile and easily replaceable if I damaged it or used two different blades or whatever so I decided I was gonna put a replaceable insert in there so your am creating this data cleaning it out in the preparation to make an insert this was a handy feature I'm really glad I could get the time to do this and so now I've got my groove cut and it's time to make sure I've got it the depth of cut just right well of course I didn't so I went at it again and it's always best to sneak up on something like that you don't want to go all out it and then cut it too deep first pass so here we are making the second pass [Music] the things we do as woodworkers lots of repetition and so I'll check it again and of course I'm still not right so I go at it one more time I would be a master date or after this you think and there we go getting finish is good exactly where a woman so now I'm gonna let my pieces down to make sure everything's good to go - I made a scrap piece there and check it just to confirm that my pieces ripped I went ahead now I've cut three of those so I've got two got extra and I plan on if I've got a thicker crosscut blade or inner cross cut blade or if I do anything that I need that then I'll have backups you go in there that's a good look at the replacement bit that I bought after I've burnt my klingspor that's the match tip that bits you need it's got a line there's you know exactly how high to raise it up it's also got a slight curve right where that cutter leach the shape that's a nice feature because that drastically reduces how much sanding he's got to be done anyway finishing up the pinch here we've got two grooves on one side one on the other and then one on top it'll increase with lots of hold downs and lots of different fixture capabilities alright so getting everything dialed in here from our insert laying out on my holes that I'm going to put in here and I think I went with seven or eight per side it's excessive I know but it's not gonna go anywhere I decided to use quarter-twenty flathead machine screws 1/2 inch long so no not going to have a lot of link but they don't need it they go through the insert piece into two nuts and I'm gonna put on the bottom side so we're drilling out that insert piece to make sure that's good to go and remember I've got three of those so I've got a template now to be able to cut the other three the same by the other two the same way so get those screw holes done on it flip it over now it's time to put it in the TT nuts and drilling out my 3/4 inch hole for those and recess in those in about 1/16 you definitely don't want they're sticking out while you're trying to maintain friction free on a slip so I got those in you come to bang them in one hand seems like I just did this with the C&C oh wait I did help back a little PTSD but that's ok so I got the insert put in and I'm gonna start getting those tightened up one at a time because I want to draw those in but before I do I realized that because of the stud that sticks out on the inside of that TT nut I'm gonna have to put finish drilling those out again I drilled him out a quarter-inch originally then realized that things 5/16 so I had to read drilling a lot of repetition or that said earlier but the way it goes so anyway tightening up the t-nuts by using a screw to actually draw them in tight and something working my way down each one of those holes making sure everything is getting it aligned out now it's time to get them all put in run to a final test all right [Music] now comes the fun part all that singing then I'll tell you this is where I'm thankful I switched over to that match fit router bit because that dovetail that really cut down on how much sanding was required there's sharp edges that are left from the normal dovetail bit then you definitely need to be eased over to say the least so I'm spending a lot of time there get mozi just over by hand trying to method after method get that done now it's time down bus and that with my a box orbital everything for the defense that it did that standard as well everything's got to be smooth and clean [Music] and now comes the fun part I'm laying out for the future [Music] and I came in 1 inch from the corner and everyone had me pretty drilling all the holes and I'm using a countersink bit to make sure that the hole is actually a recessed in you can see here I'm actually still using those slots to hold the fence in place but that system is fantastic I'm telling you that's all kind of versatility I won't tell you the mistake that I made actually lock that clamp in there by accident didn't even pay attention make mcerf put the kerf cut down on the insert so that way that part is complete and now I'm using the William lien method to your 5 cut and I'm not gonna go through that process it's a bunch of math fancy numbers and yadda yadda blah blah blah but essentially when you go through that you should be able to determine how square you are right now 24 thousands out well I perform this operation three more times and ended up coming to 0.0004 square that's pretty dang good now it's time to build a jig for this thing so I took a piece of square particle board and kind of got that cut right in half at an angle 45 degrees and I'm still using the sled jig and making all sorts of the things now I'm gluing those two triangles together get nailed together and I'm gonna go ahead and put some screws in there as well I want to make sure this is a good to go and we don't have to worry about it because I need to work on this thing now and not wait on glue to drop any screws aren't gonna hurt anything because I'm not planning on cutting all the way through so lay this thing out get it square since I am point zero zero zero at four square both sides got it in there now it's time to test it out so I'll make myself a little miter here it's that of some scrap MDF I had laying around and you can see that's what the jig looks like you can actually hold pieces down I have slot screwed screwed into the front and so I can hold pieces into it from the face of it and it mounts right onto the jig using some tea bolts and according to my ink are guaranteed square that mitre is perfect oh pretty square huh all right I want to stop for a second just take a minute just show you a safety concern and you know if you're gonna build a sled obviously you're gonna run into this case where your blade is exposed I've raised it all the way up and pushed it to where it meets the apex on the inside part of the fence well that leaves me roughly about three inches here that's exposed well I don't want that and I was gonna build something anyway but this gives me an exact measurement so I know to give myself a little clearance so I'm gonna put down a shim because this is actually sticking in recess in from the edge that's what I needed to do to make the fence perfectly square so what we'll do is I've notch this out and that'll sit here right in the middle of where my curves going to be I've gotten matching much pieces that will go on either side of that and that'll sit flush at the top there then I have another piece to complete the square so to speak and then that's my dad own measurement of how much is exposed so now I'm going to cap it with that and I'm going to leave this opening here so that I can see when that blade reaches that point eventually I may put some Plexiglas on it or something but for now I'm gonna leave that exposed that'll give me sort of a viewfinder to know when this blade has reached this piece and if I am for whatever reason fully fully raised on the blade at least I'll be able to see that and know my limits so anyway quick little box I'm gonna put together and I've already measured I'm gonna have clearance if I using one and a quarter nails on either side it's not going to interfere to the center of the curve so we're knock that out real quick and then we'll come back alright so a lot of talking here anything see I'm just nailing that piece in again I'm offsetting where I know that curve will be I definitely don't plan on using the data with this if I do need a dado I will certainly make a difference lid that will accommodate data widths for now it'll just be my combo blade or my crosscut blade one it'll be used in this so let's make the first pass and kind of see what we look like here and the problem is when you're holding the camera you don't really pay much attention so you just go ahead and cut all the way through well that lesson learned there ruin my nice clean piece of plywood alright here it is the micro jig Matchett dovetail inspired crosscut sled you see this thing is fully gritted out so I can do clamps from any direction no matter which side of the table I can come in this that side face of the fence and it doesn't have to be limps I can even use these little fixtures that they offer which I currently have one set in here I'm using this as my adjustable fence to lock in different links eventually I will put in a flip stop touch style fence but I'm still sort of rumbling through that in my head to figure out exactly how I want to do that so that it meets all the things that I want to do with it but in the meantime this is going to be my stop and it works really well you see this thing has got an integrated replaceable kerf insert so I can replace this if I use a our blade or a full curved blade I can simply use this I've already got the pattern so I can drill these out the same as this so we're going to go there this thing is just just incredible I've already got it set up for using a variety of different clamps and what the pumpkins even though I've already got a jig here for numerous riders which works absolutely perfect you slide in a standard t-track stud you can see that works really well it's a little bit snug but works fine come right in here I can lock this down and that's going to allow me to make a lot of different jigs as well as you can see once I get this down in and locked in place this gets held there then no matter what I'm doing if I'm making a mitre cut my minor cut I've got plenty of length here for most picture frames but for whatever reason if it's longer I can also do that if I got a really short piece I've integrated the dovetail system here on the on the edge of the door as well so I can actually lock this piece in place so that my hands are out of the way if it's something longer obviously I've got that capability as well I've got this side fully open so I can take my fence off slide this where I needed to be and right back in the same direction I can hold it down by hand or I've got a series of these dovetails already integrated into the edge so I can lock this down it's not going anywhere safely make my cut unclip it and then go about my business of completing the miter this thing is just fantastic I am really excited you might notice I did take away some of the corner here with a little curve I didn't necessarily think I needed that but it also helped reduce some of the weight but I've got this fits fully glued in I've got this fits screwed in with some 2-inch screws and man I took did the five cut method on this it took me three tries four tries but I've got this thing dialed into point zero zero zero four I don't think I could have gotten any more accurate so definitely don't live that long this thing works exceptionally well man I am super excited I've been wanting this sled since I started my shot back up again but I just kept putting it off because I kept rattling around in my hand on just the right design that I wanted for my machine this will also allow me to get this thing fully integrated with different JS different fixtures different hold downs man it is expandable beyond belief this match to dovetail system I wasn't whenever I did my drill press table and tested everything out on it I absolutely fell in love and I knew that's what I wanted from a cross cut sled it has done everything that I wanted it to do and I have cut out a lot of little parts here already just in in fixing and adjusting and playing and getting dialed in but again this is Chris with the match fit dovetail system inspired crosscut sled I dare you to go out do me on your sled prove me wrong this is probably the best one I've ever seen so I did have some people tell me it might be a little big it might be but this allows me to do anything I want to do and and if I decide I need to make a smaller one I'll make a smaller but for now this is this is it this is not really that heavy I can move it around easily hangs right on my wall so here's my slit what do you think let me know give me a comment down below and give me your opinion wire down there hit that little subscribe button and once you do that click the little bell you never know you might be wanting to be notified one more time of another video that day maybe not who knows but anyway none like this is what we got and I'm super excited about it can't wait to do more projects and see what else see what else I can add to this thing to make it even better so this is Chris with crisscross graphs and the microfiche fit dovetail inspired crosscut sled from my table saw til next time want to see what an idiot looks like I'm building the sled that's not the idiot part this thing is built fantastic the idiot part was I used this clamp to hold this fence in place while I doubt it in and screwed it in place well can you get it out looks like I have a permanent clamp fixture yep

Channel: Christcross Crafts

Views: 29,811

Rating: 4.9258451 out of 5

Keywords: crosscut sled, microjig, matchfit, dovetail, clamp, jig, sled, tablesaw sled, shop jig

Id: bcZ6V-2_NHs

Length: 22min 1sec (1321 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020