Crosscut sled project from Hell

Every big project seems to have something that just doesn’t go well. At all. Well, at least one something. For me, it has been building a crosscut sled for the new table saw. It took me three tries and it still has a variety of problems. For now though, it will work and I can do most of the things I need to with it. It isn’t as pretty as the one on the cover of Fine Woodworking magazine:

Crosscut sled sitting on table saw

However it (finally) works pretty well and is sturdier than my old one. The main problem now is that I need to make cross cuts 45″ long. While I can do this by supporting the piece to the right of the sled, currently there is no way to make repeatable cuts the way I can for short pieces by clamping a scrap against the back fence at the right distance. I’m considering now how to make some sort of extension to allow making these repeatable 45″ cuts, as there are many of them in a RSTL.

Getting a Woody!

Boy, it has been over a month since I’ve posted! Most of the past month focused on adding to my woodworking tools. I’ll go into more details in future posts, but here is a quick overview of all the great new (and used) equipment I’ve added:

Craigslist table saw with router table extension

 

Delta dust collector for table saw and router table

 

With two routers, I can leave one in the router table while keeping my DeWalt plunge router for hand use. I picked up a bunch of new clamps too.

I’ve also had to spend time building a cross-cut sled, a push stick, a 135 degree angle jig… More about these in a future post.