A few days ago, maybe a week, I told someone I'd post some pictures of the homemade end-grain sled that I use on my router table. The name of that person and the thread in question have now escaped my aging and increasingly fragile memory, but if you're reading this, here you go:
The sled consists of a chunk of 3/4" MDF with a hardwood fence attached to it at right angles. There's a cutout at one front corner, for bit clearance, and a couple toggle clamps atop the fence.
The workpiece loads into the sled by simply positioning it against the fence and locking down the clamps.
At the router table, the long edge of the sled rides against the fence. Note how the bit is raised higher than normal to compensate for the 3/4" thick base of the sled.
A sled like this provides the same function as a miter slot and miter gauge, but is better. Since the sled indexes the fence, there's no need to carefully align the fence so it is parallel to the miter slot. Although my current router table, the Otter-built "Ryoborghini," includes a miter slot, the next one I build will not.
The sled consists of a chunk of 3/4" MDF with a hardwood fence attached to it at right angles. There's a cutout at one front corner, for bit clearance, and a couple toggle clamps atop the fence.
The workpiece loads into the sled by simply positioning it against the fence and locking down the clamps.
At the router table, the long edge of the sled rides against the fence. Note how the bit is raised higher than normal to compensate for the 3/4" thick base of the sled.
A sled like this provides the same function as a miter slot and miter gauge, but is better. Since the sled indexes the fence, there's no need to carefully align the fence so it is parallel to the miter slot. Although my current router table, the Otter-built "Ryoborghini," includes a miter slot, the next one I build will not.
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