Thread: Crosscut sled: Personal recommendations & Tips

Hi Bernmc,

When I was contemplating my first sled I suffered analysis paralysis and took a long time deciding how to build my perfect sled. Then one day I desperately needed a sled for a simple job and knocked one up, and so began the sled collection.

The best advice I can offer is to not overthink it. Spend $24 (or is it $42) at Bunnings on a 2400x1200x17 sheet of mdf, and make a basic sled. Then when you need to do something else, make another one, and so forth. If at some point you think you need a super sled like the one in the video, go for it. Though I'd suspect after your first couple you will consider it far simpler and more practical to have several dedicated sleds for different types of cut.

Oh, and when a family member uses your sled to do a funky angled cut that makes it useless for what you built it for, rather than throwing a fit, you can just shrug and make another one, because it only cost you $5 and 15 minutes to make in the first place. [emoji3]

Lance

Three things that are probably fairly obvious :

Make the scale on top of the fence movable, so you can accommodate blades of different thickness (assuming sawstop has such things).

Make the fence fixed on one end but movable on the other, so you can fine tune it to the last tiny part of a degree. I know that if you build it at 90% to the blade it should stay that way but somehow they don’t.

I’d use a blade guard too. I was lucky to find some long strips of Lexan which made perfect blade guards. Just a strip between the front stiffener and the fence, above where the blade travels, and perhaps on the other side of the fence (where the blade emerges as the sled is pushed past the blade).

Also, I thoroughly agree with Lances comment that it’s better to make several sleds for dedicated tasks rather then one excessively complicated one. I had 9 at one stage, which may have been going overboard a bit.

Lance is giving good advice. Keep it simple. The important bit is getting it cutting at 90*.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by Bernmc

Does anyone who's made a sled have any recommendations for alternate designs, or things you'd have added/done differently?

Screenshot 2019-03-20 10.45.26.jpg

Stop the T-track 20mm short of one end, but continue the slot in the wood to the end. That way you can remove the clamps if you wish to, because there are many (most) times you will not need to clamp the job, and the clamp just gets in the way.

Whilst I haven't watched the one from King's Woodworking yet, here's the one I had bookmarked and thought of making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWyLrDZAW-c