Simple Method To Build A Table Saw Cross Cut Sled

I've needed a crosscut sled for my table saw for years but I always had a way around. I'd made some basic sleds, used a miter gauge or the radial arm saw. I finally broke down this year and bought a commercially made sled when I needed something better than what I had and didn't have time to make a new one.

Unfortunately, even that wasn't quite up to the task as I have started making more cutting boards that require a wide, narrow and perfectly square cut. It was time to finally build the one I needed.

After I watching a lot of videos to get ideas and see what features I thought I'd need I found that everyone was using some crazy multi-step methods to get their fences squared to the blade. I couldn't quite figure out why we needed to make it so complicated when we have a perfectly good tool in the shop to do this with. That tool was, conveniently named, a square!

If the square is good enough to set up our tools, check our projects and make layouts for everything in the shop then why do we need to go through the 2, 3 or 5 cut methods and do lots of math to get our crosscut sled set up correctly? I decided to find so I built mine using a square then checked it with the 5 step method. How did it turn out? Check out the video to see.