Segmented Sanding Sled

Re: Segmented Sanding Sled

Dick Coers

I've mainly seen half rings sawn on the table saw. Either with a rail in the miter gage slot, or against the rip fence. What kind of sander are you using? Disc? Maybe I'm just thinking about larger diameters, but sanding a straight line on a sander seems like a difficult way to do it.

Re: Segmented Sanding Sled

john lucas

I have a sled that fits in my miter slot. I have drilled a bunch of holes in it and put T nuts in from the underside. I made clamps out of wood so that I can now cut anything that I can clamp down no matter what the shape. The clamps I use are sort of C shaped with a half circle cut in the top and a slot cut in that. I have a half circle with a slot that goes into the C shaped clamp. This has a piece of all thread through it with a knob on top. I'll try to take a photo later today. Gotta go cut up 2 large trees for firewood for the next several days.

I have used this sled to cut up half rings, custom miters or odd V shaped things. Anything I can clamp and align I can cut. I got lucky and found a photo.

Re: Segmented Sanding Sled

Dick Strauss

Dale,

If I were to build this, I would start out with at least two layers of 3/4" plywood as the base. The plywood should ride on the miter slot so you'd need to add a miter bar to the bottom of the plywood base. The plywood+miter bar should be fitted so that it rides right against the disc (to prevent gaps where rings are left unsupported that might cause them to chip). I would suggest that you make the plywood base and miter bar a fair amount (at least 50%) longer than the size of your rings so that you can get it started on the sander to establish support before you begin sanding of the actual rings. I would dado in some pieces of T-track radiating out from a central point to hold the rings (this dado is usually about 1/2" deep so that is why I suggest two pieces of plywood). I would use t-nut mounted toggle clamps in the t-track to hold the rings to the board at various locations depending on the radius of the ring.

Once complete, you would clamp the ring every so slightly proud of the plywood. Then you would run the whole assembly including the ring past the disc almost like you are routing except that you would want to run it left to right so that the disc sands the rings on the disc's downward path to the table (so that the disc forces the ring down rather than trying to lift it up as would happen with right to left motion).

I hope this gives you some good ideas.

Re: Segmented Sanding Sled

Dave Paine

I have made some segmented bowl. Like you I make half rings and then sand the edges square so both halves have a good fit. I use a 12in disc sander. I have not needed a sled just light pressure.

For your sled, how about installing a couple of aluminium T slots parallel to the sanding edge. This will allow you to mount clamps on either side of the rings and accommodate a lot of ring diameters and widths.

Re: Segmented Sanding Sled

ebd

Instead of trying to get the segments right after the fact (after they are cut) I would (actually did) make a sled to cut them perfectly in the first place. I made this one (http://www.turnedwood.com/framesled.html) and spent a long time making test cuts till I got the adjustment exactly right and then locked it down - never to be changed. I've been using it for a lot of years and never had a ring come out other than a perfect fit.

I modified the design a bit. First I made it on a thick acrylic/plexaglass sheet. I used a 2" thick piece of wood for the fence and attached two toggle hold downs on it. One to hold the stop (so each segment is the exact same size) and one to hold the piece getting cut (so there is no chance of movement).

It worked so good that I made one to do perfect 45° cuts and I'm thinking of doing one for perfect 90° cuts. Nothing beats being able to pop a sled onto the table saw and know, without any test cuts or other fooling around, that the cut will be exact - no fuss, no muss, no time wasted.

I don't have time right now but later today I will take a picture of my sled and post it.

Re: Segmented Sanding Sled

Dale Jablonski

lots of good ideas, thank everyone.

Sled Pictures

ebd

Here is a pic of the jig from the top and one closeup with the stop clamped in:

Re: Segmented Sanding Sled/link

John Stegall

Look around on this link: http://www.segeasy.com/wedgiesledplan1.pdf

Some more info:

Try the Seg Easy *LINK*

john lucas

I built my seg easy before I moved so I didn't have much time to play with it. I finally started working with it again the other day. I fought segmented cutting for years. I had a dedicated miter gauge. After much experimentation I thought I had it dead on, but I would cut 10 rings and half of them would require glueing up in halves. The problem with that on critical ring alignment is both halves rarely form a perfect circle. By that I mean one half ring will be slightly larger than the other after sanding them flat. This throws things off when when your trying to stack multiple rings and have a matching pattern.

In steps the Seg Easy. I'm just in the early learning phase and I built my own wedges which may not be perfect. However on my limited experiments so far the 16 segment rings are coming out perfect. It saves a huge amount of time and increases accuracy of the final ring details if you can glue up a whole ring at once.

Watch several of the videos on this site and then consider buying some wedges. It will save you a lot of heart aches.


http://segeasy.com/

Re: Try the Seg Easy *LINK*

Guy Bratt

You can make some accurate wedges with some acrylic or 3/8 birch plywood if you use a calculator and lay out with a striking knife. Take your time to finish down to the struck line.


http://www.mathportal.org/calculators/plane-geometry-calculators/right-triangle-calculator.php

I guess I'm too math challenged

john lucas

I don't see how to use the link you posted. It's for a right triangle. None of my seg easy wedges have a right triangle.

Re: I guess I'm too math challenged

Guy Bratt

Looks to me as Jerry just cut the sides to equal length (pie shape). They're still 15, 22.5 ect. The math measurements I feel will make an accurate angle vs trying to set up with a protractor. They only have to be made once and only as needed.

Re: I guess I'm too math challenged

john lucas

It may give accurate results but I couldn't figure out how to use it. I used a sine bar and adjustable parallels to set up an angle against my table saw fence. Then I set up a fence on a sliding table to this angle and cut the wedgie. the only problem with this is it assumes that the table saw fence is dead on. My fence is within a few thousands of perfectly parallel to the miter slots so it's probably pretty good.