For years—okay, a decade (maybe more)—I’ve wanted a cross cut sled for my table saw. It sounds easy; why not just stick some wood together and get on with it? Right? Well, once you start thinking about it, it’s a complicated build.
A piece of plywood (3/4″ for rigidity) to make the base sled. Some designs use 2×6’s and 2×4’s for the front and rear fences. How do I square the rear fence to the sled? It goes on and on! How does one decide what design and what materials to use to build the thing? There are great designs that don’t fit my needs and I didn’t feel confident enough to modify the designs for myself.
Then I came across a design for a Cross Cut / Miter Sled by Nick Ferry on YouTube. Not only does he use materials I find quite satisfactory (Baltic birch plywood and Kreg hardware) but he uses a squaring method (5-cut method by William Ng; Ng is a genius…watch all his YouTube stuff) to square up the rear fence.
So, I found myself at the point where I had a design and construction method I liked and no other excuses not to build the thing. Well, in that situation I had to build it, of course. The pictures in the album above show the build without the miter attachment accessory. I’ll build the miter attachment accessory next.
Anyway, once I completed the cross cut sled, I was able to tune it to < 0.002″ over 22″ accuracy. That’s way more accurate than I was expecting and I’m very happy with the results. Also, as an added bonus, Wendy (my wife), made the caution decals for the sled. They take the project to a whole new level of professional quality.
