Why didn't I make a sled sooner

[smorris]

I kept threatening to make one but always had something else to work on...so a couple nights ago I put everything aside and built a small 24x24 sled to see if it was worth building a larger one. I wasn't real happy with how it moved in the table slot until I remembered to wax the guide, smooth as silk after that.

Fast forward to a couple hours ago when I had to cut some pieces of padauk for the base of LOML's table I'm making. Ran one end through the saw on the sled to try it out, dead square. Marked the other end at 24" and lined up the pencil mark with the cut line, all are exactly 24" long and square.

I gotta make a bigger one now. Remaining to do, add a lexan guard over the blade, add something where the blade exits the sled to avoid naked blade syndrome.

Live and learn.

[DonHo]

sleds are very useful. I've got a few deticated to special task. I don't have one for simple cross cuts ( I have the Sears bt clone) but I have one for 45s for picture frames, one for 45s in the other direction (blade tilt) to cut box sides, a very small one to inlay material for the celtic knots in pen blanks, one with a "V" on top to cut miter key slots in box corners and even one for my bandsaw to cut pen blans based on tube length. They take a little time and effort to build but in the long run they are great time savers as well as making things more accurate(for me at least).

DonHo

[poolhound]

Its amazing how long we put things off even when it will make our lives easier. I had a similar experience. It had always been a PITA cutting wide panels on the BT as the clearance is rather small so a month or so ago I finally got around to making a panel cutting sled. It took all of about an hour and works like a dream; perfect square corners and no limit to length.

Over the next few weeks I intend to make a xcut & miter sled to add to this one.