I can’t believe I has been nearly 10 years since my last woodworking blog post. We’ve moved three times in that period (such is the life of a military member!) and have settled into a new home that is again conducive to having a decent wood shop in our basement.
My first big project in this new home is to reconfigure the garage for convenient, orderly access to tools and other supplies. This will entail using a French cleat system and customized hangers, shelves, and totes for placing most items on the wall of the garage. I will write more about this later.
For now, I am discovering a lack of having the right precision tools and jigs in the wood shop itself. One key item is missing from my table saw: a crosscut sled. Of note, attempting to execute a precision, 90-degree crosscut on a board is difficult using only a miter gauge. Those things tend to slip, rack, and otherwise mess up the cut.
This past weekend I decided to build a sturdy crosscut sled that would ride smoothly in the miter grooves of my portable Craftsman table saw. The sled, pictured below, is made of a 36”x 24” piece of 1/2” plywood, reinforced on the front and rear with a 1.5” thick rail of plywood (two 3/4” pieces glued together). I placed an additional block of the same at the front of the sled to reinforce the structure and to remind me to keep my hands away from the blade. The runners are made of hardwood, glued to the bottom of the slide, and fit nicely into the grooves of the accessory table mounted on the left-hand side of the saw.
It works exceptionally well! The sled is sturdy, perfectly square to the kerf of the Saw, doesn’t “rack,” and glides smoothly across the table saw. This will come in handy as I continue constructing hangers and shelves for the garage storage system and pursue other projects.
