Table saw sleds
Virgil Johnson
While browsing the isles of shiny stuff at the Lexington KY Woodcraft clutching my 10 dollar off coupon I spotted an item I just had to have. A 5' square sheet of 1/2” Baltic birch plywood. I wanted to duplicate the sled I currently use (14” wide) and build one that was capable of holding a 24” wide panel. When I built the original 14” sled 25 years ago my thought was to build it as a prototype and refine it later with a fancy one. Never happened.
Not being one who needs a lot of frills in a tool I built basic sleds again since the old one worked out just fine but was showing its age. (got set outside the door once and rained on) No built in scales, stops or hold downs just a replaceable insert on the front rail. I find clamping a block of wood against the rail with a drywall screw protruding makes and excellent adjustable stop. I use the saw fence for longer parts (using a 123 block to keep the stock from binding)The old sled could handle 14” and was light so I copied it and made a second sled to cut wide panels. I chose to set the guide rails (runners...made from 3/8 x 3/4" steel) into slots in the base since this seems to be more robust than relying on the screws to hold the runners in place. I tapped the runners 10/32 and used 3/4” long flat head screws to secure them.
The miter gage slots in my PM 66 are .753” wide and 11.985” between. (milled after lunch on Friday?)
The next operation could be titled “How to cut slots a desired distance apart and how to fix the problem when you didn't” .
I cut the first groove in the sled base using the back rail of the large sled as a guide. Next I calculated the distance I needed to space the next guide rail over and stacked a bunch of stuff up (123 blocks and space blocks) to the calculated distance. The 24” sled came out really good and the 14” was too tight in the slots. I repeated process on one slot of the 14” sled cutting the slot 1/16” deeper and was able to fix it.
I squared the front rails initially using a framing square and used the 5 cut method to do the final adjustment. The 24” sled was OK just using the square method but I had to move the rail .008” over the 27” rail length on the 14” sled.
I added a large block of wood in the area where the blade emerges as a safety guard.
