Router Table Sled

glenn bradley

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I thought I was done making jigs during this little break but, I no sooner started planning the next piece than I found myself planning to make a router table cut (or sequence of cuts) that I've always wanted a sled for.

RT Sled (1).jpg

The tablesaw sled extension gets its first official use:

RT Sled (2).jpg . RT Sled (3).jpg

Its also official, I love my new dado jig ;-)

RT Sled (4).jpg

Anyway, it is pretty simple. Its purpose is to handle those router table jobs that are big enough to be awkward with a miter gauge but, not big enough to go at with a hand held router. It will also handle angled dados, sliding dovetails and so forth. The universal track takes all my various holddowns.

RT Sled (5).jpg . RT Sled (6).jpg . RT Sled (7).jpg

Tomorrow I'll route for the zero clearance piece shown in the drawing and make up some sacrificial fences for it but, right now, I'm hungry.
 
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Glenn,

I think you better blow out that Ridgid drill motor. Remember, I had a Black and Decker "Firestorm" live up to it's name---the insides caught on fire. Black and Decker was real nice to me. The drill was only about 45 days old. Their warranty policy was, "Go buy a new one." I have been sour on Black and Decker ever since.

Sorry, I got off track there. You appear to have a lot of dust going in the air holes in the motor. I think you should move it or cover it for future sawing sessions.

Enjoy,
Dad---JimB to the rest of you.
 
You appear to have a lot of dust going in the air holes in the motor. I think you should move it or cover it for future sawing sessions.

Good catch. I have found that using the vac hose for certain routing operations is more trouble than vacuuming up afterwards. Using the dado jig is one of these. I tend to just mask up and let it fly. The very next thing I do is leave the ear muffs and mask on and grab the shop vac hose to clean up. Otherwise you have a safety issue for more than just the drill. Anyone who has slipped on freshly saw-dusted concrete knows what I mean :blackeye:
 
OK, I have the ZCI slot built and it takes the same ZCI blanks I use on my medium tablesaw sled so I don't have to make up another special size.

RT Sled (8).jpg

I am still percolating on the throat ZCI. I want it easily replaceable for different profiles but, don't want to have to bury the bit in a block of wood each time. I am fooling with a torsion box sort of fence face idea with a recess for the throat plate . . . I'll get there.
 
Add Top Track for Flip-Stops

I was using this sled for a recent project. I was handicapped by needing a stop that was beyond the reach of the fence's t-slots.

RT Sled (9).jpg

I usually deal with this by using flip-stops but, had neglected to include a top rail in my design. This was no big deal for this one-off piece but, I wanted to be ready for any run of multiples I might do in the future. I had none of the track I needed in my stash and I was disturbed to find that Rockler/Bench Dog are discontinuing this item and there were none available on line or over the phone.

I was off work yesterday and so went out to pick LOML up from work and take her out to dinner. Rockler is on the way so I stopped in and lo and behold; there were a couple of the discontinued Bench-Dog Top-Tracks which were being blown out. If they'd of had more than two I would have taken them all since many of my fences and jigs are built with the associated flip stops in mind.

<side note> Just goes to show you, spoil your loved ones; they deserve it for putting up with you.

I added a strip of this track to the router sled's fence.

RT Sled (10).jpg

Now I can put the stop in close for one cut, flip it up and flip the other down for the second cut.

RT Sled (11).jpg . RT Sled (12).jpg . RT Sled (13).jpg

This will come in handy later on this project and on others going forward. I find I come up with most of my "improvements" by resolving a real-shop situation.
 
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