Hi everyone and welcome to Bob's wood Stuff.
Today I'm going to show you how to make this basic crosscut sled for a table saw.
Using this piece of sanded pine plywood,
what I want to do is rip one side of it against the rip fence to
get two parallel sides, and then rip it to my final width.
Now I'm going to rip down one side of a 2x4 to make it nice
and flat before I glue it on to the sled.
And then I'll glue and screw this 2x4 to the front of the sled.
This one does not have to be square so don't worry about that at all.
I want the fence on this sled to be about four inches tall, so I'm
gonna cut some four inch strips out of this plywood to glue them together and
make the back fence out of.
My favorite way of spreading glue is a scrap piece
of cardboard with notches cut into it.
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Then I used the miter saw to cut off the ends and clean them up.
Then I ripped both edges on the table saw to make them clean and square to the face.
The next step is to take a piece of wood that is
thinner than the depth of the track in your table saw and then cut it to the
same width as the track.
It's good to leave a little bit extra and then pare down to it either using sandpaper
or a hand plane so you get a perfect fit that still slides easily.
Now I need to take some washers or pennies and put them in the track to raise this up
a little bit so that it contacts the sled while I glue it.
I'll just place a small amount of wood glue on these.
You don't need too much because this is gonna be screwed on later.
And then I'll put the sled on top of it.
The most important thing right now is to not cut into these screws,
so just place it in a position where you're not
gonna cut it to the screws with your saw blade.
Otherwise just make it look kind of straight and it should be fine.
I'll also put a couple of weights on it just to make the glue set a little bit better.
Once the glue has dried on the runners, I screw them down for extra support.
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If you need to, you can sand the runners down a little bit try to get a better fit.
At this point it's a good idea to add some wax.
This will lubricate it as it slides and protect your tabletop.
I'm using some car wax, but really any kind of wax will work.
Paste wax works quite well.
Make sure to get the runners as well as the bottom of the sled.
The next step is to raise the blade up and cut
part of the way through your sled.
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The next step is to attach the back fence.
This one actually does need to be square to the blade,
so I'll start by screwing it in on one side only.
So now this can pivot and using either a carpenter square, one of these squares, or
a piece of wood that you know is square on one side,
you want to mate that up against the fence and then adjust the angle of it until it
is perpendicular with your kerf that you've cut.
That I believe is as close as I can get it.
I'm gonna try to slide it back without shifting anything.
Now I'll screw this side in to lock in that angle.
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The last step is to do a test cut on a scrap of wood and make sure that it
comes out square.
Well that's all there is to building a basic crosscut sled.
It works quite effectively.
I hope you liked the video and please like and subscribe.
Bye