Miter Sled help?

2023
7

I just got my tablesaw in. Put it together and squared up the fence pretty good. I made a sled, and It isn’t square. I did everything as accurately as I could but it is very slighly off. My goal is to be making very small jewelry boxes and things like that and the very tiny amount it is off by is crushing any possibility of making a square box. Do you guys have any suggestions?

+Walnut

Check out this method. It might help you.

Tor and Odin are the greatest of gods.

What method? I don’t see anything.

+Walnut

What type of sled are you using? One that has you tilting your blade to 45, or one that holds your work piece at 45, and keeps your blade at 90? I built a simple one over the weekend that has me tilting the blade to 45. I can make a more accurate sled that way, less to get wrong. I use the 5 cut method to square the fence as best as possible with the blade still at 90, then, once the fence is square, use a digital angle finder to set the blade to exactly 45 of the table bed. If your joints are coming together nicely, but the end result is not square, most likely your blade is slightly off of 45 (or if using a sled that holds your work piece at 45, either your sled is off of 45, or your blade is slightly off of 90. If your joints aren’t coming together nicely, then the surface your registering your work piece against isn’t square, or it could be a combo of both.

For now, i’m trying to make one to simply cross-cut at 90. I threw one together quickly but its off very slightly. I’m looking for some techniques to getting the saw cutting perfectly as I cannot build anything small and precise if it is even off by a hair.

+Walnut

Sorry for that.

Tor and Odin are the greatest of gods.

Yup, go with the 5 cut method. Its very accurate, and will get you as close as possible. Madts already posted a video, but here is a link that describes the process pretty well also. Good luck!

http://newwoodworker.com/basic/5cut.html

I just went with a good square. That’s my 4th square. All the previous 3 where not square along all their length. There were good for 1 to 2" maximum.
The square must be square. A lot of squares are square to 0.001 for the first few inches and the rest of it has a higher tolerance.
Make sure your fence is not glued so you can adjust it until you get it square.
Cross cutting small pieces will not show the errors much but wider crosscut will show it.
The 5 cut method mentioned above is great.

Abbas, Castro Valley, CA