Studio711.com – Ben Martens

I’ve written before about making a crosscut sled for the table saw. I used the first one so much that it kind of wore out and I had ideas for improvements so I made another. They’re incredibly convenient especially for the smaller toy projects that I was doing. It’s a very safe and precise way to cut small pieces (among other things.)

My new table saw had miter slots that were a different width so I needed to build another sled. This time I incorporated some t-track and a flip stop that slides in that track. This allows me to get repeatable cuts with the stop but I can also flip it up after I set the position of the piece to avoid any binding between the blade and the stop.

The process was pretty much the same as previous builds, but because I had a much more precise saw, I decided to spend extra time squaring up the fence to get perfect 90 degree cuts.

I used my big square to get it initially set close to 90 and then did the 5 cut test to see how far off I was. Watch that link to see it in action, but basically you make a cut, rotate the piece, make a cut, rotate, etc. You do that 5 times and then you measure the width of the last slice at the top and the bottom. That helps you calculate how much out of square your sled is because it really magnifies the error. I was so far off that it was plainly visible to the naked eye. How could that be when my square said I was spot on? I futzed with it for quite a while and then got frustrated and walked away. During my break, I realized that the only explanation was that my square wasn’t square. Indeed it wasn’t! So I changed up my method of dialing it in and got it to a point where over a 40″ cut, I only deviate by 0.001″ from being perfectly square. That’s insanely perfect. In fact, it’s so good that I suspect I’m within the margin of error for my setup and my measuring tools. Plenty good enough for me.

Yesterday was Dad and Mom’s 40th anniversary! Congratulations! They’ve been supportive as parents and been a great example of a loving marriage for us to follow.

It feels a little silly to give someone a hunk of wood as a gift after forty years of effort, but that’s what I did. I took one of the pictures from their honeymoon in Jamaica and transferred it onto a piece of pine. To do the transfer, I took a sheet of blank address labels that you run through your printer and I peeled off all the labels so I was left with the waxy surface. I printed with my inkjet printer right onto that waxy surface and then carefully pressed it onto the wood. Through trial and error I learned that you really need to give it a good rub to transfer the ink. Steve Ramsey has a good video about this process. If you’re smarter than me, you’ll remember to flip the image in your photo editing software before doing this.

I finished it off with a couple coats of spray lacquer to protect it a little and then made a support so it would stand up kind of like a photo frame.

Chris and Nikki replaced the fridge in their house when they moved in so they were looking to get rid of the one that was in the house. (They already had another fridge in their garage.) This was right after I had gotten the truck so picking up their fridge seemed like a good excuse to take a drive.

It has been sitting in our garage unplugged since then, but now that I’ve got the garage more arranged, it was time to find a home for the fridge. I tore down the shelves and coat rack that I had built near the door. That was one of the first projects I built after moving into this house. It was done with a miter saw, circular saw and a drill. You don’t need much to get started building stuff!

The fridge went up against that wall and I decided to build two vertical shelves to go on each side. They’re pretty simple construction. I used 3/4″ plywood and used my router with a straight edge and a 3/4″ bit to cut dadoes to hold the shelves. I cut the dadoes before cutting the board into two pieces for each side of hte shelves. That guaranteed that the shelves would be perfectly flat. After that I glued everything together and nailed it in place. They aren’t fancy but they should work well. The next step will be building cabinets to go along the wall above the fridge.

I bought a router table a while back but I’ve never had a good place to use it. I kept it along the wall in the garage and when I wanted to use it, I had to drag it out and either use it on the floor or put it on a folding table. It was worth it for big projects but for small things I often skipped it. Now that I have more space in the shop area, I decided to build a cart to give the router a more permanent home and give me some additional storage space. It’s just a simple cabinet on wheels with two drawers but I’m excited to have it completed, and it was wonderful to just drive to Home Depot and throw a couple sheets of plywood in the truck!