There are tons of table saw sled designs on the internet. One thing they (almost) all have in common is they are purpose-built sleds. When you need to safely crosscut stock, you’ll use your crosscut sled. What if you need to cut a box joint? Pull your box joint sled off the wall. Spline joints? Yup, find your spline joint sled. This sled’s modular design can do it all.
Sleds take up storage space in a small shop. Building one also uses materials which are expensive in these times of supply chain disruptions.
A farmer wouldn’t buy a tractor with a single attachment for each function in the field. Why would you do the same in your shop? Think of the sled base as your tractor, and the modules as the implements. If the modules can be changed quickly and repeatably, they’ll save you shop space and money.
Yes, this one is more complex than a standard sled. You’ll spend more time building it and the tolerances are higher, but it should last you a long time. Perhaps forever, as long as you don’t raise your saw blade high enough to cut it in half.
Why did I design it this way? First, when building boxes, between the angled cuts and straight cuts I was tearing up the bottom of my sled. Second, besides beveling edges and crosscutting, building boxes requires specialized jigs. Coming from a manufacturing engineering background, it made sense to take advantage of the sled as the basis of movement and fixturing the piece to the sled in the required configuration.
The replaceable zero-clearance plate running the length of the sled maintains the longevity of the sled. With bridges on both ends of the insert, the insert holds its shape even after a saw blade has run through it, leading to a repeatable removal and replacement. Changeover takes a matter of seconds, so if you’re going to change to a dado blade, you’ll also change to the insert that corresponds to the blade width. If you tilt your blade 45 degrees, you’ll change to the miter insert. You won’t have to build a new sled as you tear up your cutting area over time.
Another feature of the sled is the array of indexing holes in the fence. When you install a module, you can drill through one or more indexing holes into the back of the module and insert locating pins. When you need to reattach the module after removal, the pins ensure it goes back in the exact same place assuring repeatability.
Finally, the T-Track in the fence and base secure the modules in place. When crosscutting, insert a clamp into the track to safely hold your workpiece, keeping your hands away from the cutting area.
In this series, I’ll review the process of building the sled, so stay tuned.
