Bandsaw Sled

This came up in another thread, and I couldn't find that I'd posted it here before, so here are a few pics of a bandsaw sled and outfeed table I made a couple years ago.

The pics are pretty self explanatory...the sled is made of birch ply, with a UHMD plastic runner for the miter slot. The two "shoes" are mounted to t-tracks. I left the tracks a bit proud, so the shoes have dadoes to accommodate the tracks. It keeps the shoes from twisting. The shoes have sharpened bolts going through threaded inserts (which are mounted with screws) to hold odd-shaped pieces of wood. I use a hex socket on a power driver to tighten and loosen the bolts quickly.



The outfeed table is pretty simple, with a little hippie engineering for the mount onto the bandsaw fence rail. I used threaded knobs to attach the table, so it can be removed quickly if necessary. (I've not yet had the need, though.) The support legs are adjustable with built-in turnbuckles (hidden by sliding covers made of scrap wood), and they have rare earth magnets in the bottoms top keep them in place on the mobile base. That way the table moves with the saw on the mobile base.



It works well for crosscutting and ripping small logs and odd-shaped turning blanks. The only caveat is that the saw needs to have the blade drift adjusted out as much as possible, to make the cut line as close as possible to the miter slot in the table. Otherwise, the blade either wants to curve into the sled or away from it.

Holler if you have any questions.

Thanks a lot for this post Vaughn.

I see that your fence is longer than the table itself, and that rests on the outfeed table support.
Being so long and only fixed by the fence clamp to the infeed table doesn't make it flex to the left when using it??

I know that you don't use it when using the sled but I'm wondering for the other times.

Toni, I've not had any problem with the fence flexing when I'm using it. It's the stock fence that came with the saw (a Shop Fox...the white Grizzly), but it's always been pretty stable. The clamp at the infeed side is a pretty good "T" configuration. I don't tend to put much sideways pressure on it when I'm using it, though. I sometimes use featherboards to hold the wood tight to the fence, but they don't push real hard. When I'm resawing (what little resawing I do), I have a taller fence that fits over the top of the original fence, but I still don't clamp it down at the outfeed side.

Thanks vaughn

Vaughn...

Have just been thinking about this very thing. I like your design. Thanks for that.

Cheers.

I, too, have been thinking about building a sled for my bandsaw. It looks llike yours would be a good one to model mine upon. Thanks Vaughn.

I too had been considering a sled for my bandsaw. May just "re-use" your approach. Thanks for showing it.

I have also been thinking about an approach for a shop built alternative to the Laguna Circle Master (link). however, building this is lower on the priority list of things to do.

Nicely done Vaughn, I think I can work an idea or two off of this.

Very neat work and informative as well. Someday I will get to "tweaking" my bandsaw. Man that was a while back, carpet on the floor and the Craftsman lathe! That is the twin to mine. How wide is the blade?