 two absolutely critical components of a good table saw cross-cut sled. Ola, woodworkers, Paul Carlson here, small workshop guy. The subject today is cross-cut sleds. There's two absolutely key essentials to a quality cross-cut sled. One is that your runners that you're going to fit into your miter slots have to be very snug in those miter slots as far as not having any side-to-side play. When you put them down in those slots and you try to twist it, there shouldn't be any twist at all. The second characteristic for those sliders is that they push very easily. So somehow you got to get them just perfect so there's no play, but yet it's easy to push across your blade. Characteristic number one. Characteristic number two is that your back fence be perfectly planed or perfectly flat on the inside edge. You also want to put a little camper on the bottom of it to catch sawdust so that doesn't get between your face and the of your push edge here and your workpiece and then get things off. Catty, womp us a little bit. So several of the videos I'm going to point you to discuss the techniques of both cutting and putting on those runners and then getting a perfect back face here that's perfectly perpendicular to the blade. Now, crosscut sleds come from very simple to very extended or complex. And so you decide what's right for you. Start with simple of course and then work your way up. The simple design I would recommend you see the video. I'll put the link up here. Maybe go to it later. In other words, backtrack it in my video after you see the whole thing and then start going to the links you want to go to. Also, I'll always put links in the description so if you saw a little thing up here in the video, you don't have to click it right then. You can wait, go to the description at the bottom of the video and go to the same places. So I highly recommend Izzy Swans build a very simple sled similar to this. And the idea is to just use it for crosscutting and not for trying to do a lot of other things with it. At the far other extreme, I would recommend that you see the Stumpy Nubs build on what's called his mega crosscut sled. That's what I have right here. It looks a little plugey here because I've got all these different jigs on it. But let's talk about that concept. So it's a large sled but he has plans for both his mega crosscut sled and his mini crosscut sled. And the advantage of those two is they'll use the same jigs. So again, what am I talking about there? He's not just building a sled to do crosscuts at 90 degrees. He's then building jigs to put onto that sled to accomplish other things. This, for example, is a tenon jig. So if I want to cut a tenon by using my table saw blade, then I can secure my workpiece in there tight. I know it'll get it all set up so it's perfect 90 degrees. So the mega crosscut sled comes with you put in t-tracks and I even put in rulers. You can build little extension wings that have t-tracks on them. And you can lock those down where you need them to be to support wider pieces. You have the tenon jig that you can build. This is half of a dovetail jig. So that even uses the t-tracks to secure them down. There's two parts of that one. One part cuts the dovetail one way and the other part cuts the dovetail the other way that you need. And he has a jig for cutting splines so you can put a piece in there and then run it across your blade. See if I can do that without dropping that down. So you could throw a piece in here and then run that across your blade and cut a spline. I haven't cut a spline with it yet. You would think if a guy built something he would see if it works, but just haven't had the occasion yet. You also have slots and you have the ability for little lockdowns. And so you can put boards at an angle and cut 45 degrees, 30 degrees, whatever it is that you want to cut. So you got a jig for that. So that's the far extreme. A cross cut sled designed in a way that you can accomplish a multitude of things with that device. I have a link to the Stumpy Nubs. He's got a set of plans available pretty reasonably and he does a really, really good job of telling you what materials you need and step by step how to build whatever it is he's recommending you build. Alright then in between and maybe probably let me mention next the video that I believe is the best tutorial. And that's from Mark Spagnola, the Wood Whisperer. It's on his website as well as his YouTube video channel. And he does a pretty good explanation of what is a cross cut sled and how do you build one. His would be kind of a straightforward middle of the road sled without a lot of jigs and stuff on it. But again I recommend his video to get yourself a good overview about doing a cross cut sled. Another one that I like a lot and is a little bit like the Stumpy Nubs mega sled is from Nick Ferry. It doesn't go quite as far but it's a beautiful sled. Actually if I didn't have any sleds that might be the one that I would build. It's got a few features in it including some t-tracks and stuff and so it's very nice. He's got a really good video on how to build that. So that is one more thing I'd like to mention. When it comes to getting the rail exactly 90 degrees or the push rail exactly 90 degrees to your blade. The master on that is William Ng, William Ng School of Fine Woodworking. He's got a video called Five Cuts to a Perfect Cross Cut Sled. And he talks about how to set this back rail and then how to do a test cut by doing a rectangular or square piece of wood. Where you're rotating it lock wise five times and doing each cut and then measuring. As an example just so you know a little bit what I'm talking about. This is a piece of wood that I cut five times for my new sled that I'm doing. This one's so heavy and so cumbersome that I use it only when I have wider work pieces that won't fit. And what's going to be my little quick and easy sled. So anyway I used a method. I'm not going to go through it because both William Ng in the video that I'll give you a link to and Mark Spagnola give a pretty good description of the five cut method. But it's just a way of cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting and then measuring of the last strip how the far end versus the end back near the base compare to each other. If they're identical then you've got a 90 degree cut. If the top is wider than the bottom then you don't have a 90 degree cut. So that is it on table sleds. If you use your table sled and cut it with a dado stack that is forever going to be a dado stack cross cut sled. Do not try to use that then later for a single blade because you've just opened up a big opening and that would mean that work pieces, particularly small work pieces could get stuck down in that opening and become a dangerous situation. So my first one that I built has now been made into a dado stack cross cut sled. I hope you find the videos that I've selected to be, you'll agree that they're very, very good on the topic. If you've seen a cross cut sled build and I know David Pechuto has one under what's his website. It's not I like to make things but make something I think is his. He has a very good one as well. So if you've got others let me know in the comments so that our small audience that I have as subscribers or viewers might see what videos you think are good. And that's it on this topic. I'll be back at you later. I think my next video might be a review of my top 10 woodworking content providers. And then I'm later planning on doing a review of maybe some of the top online woodworking schools or online woodworking projects where you actually pay a fee to get a more detailed thing. So small workshop guy will catch you later signing off.