A table saw is a fantastic tool and with a simple “sled”, it can be safer and easier to make some great furniture pieces. We built a simple sled to test our skills at creating box joints and eventually doors and drawer faces. Here you’ll find some tips and tricks to build your own Table Saw Dado Sled. Halfway through a recent project, our first table saw gave up the ghost – as you can see, we have simple contractor-style table saws and nothing super expensive or fancy.
1. Make your Rails
The rails are what the sled runs on and they sit in the grooves that our table saw had. It is possible to buy aluminum and plastic rails, but it’s cheaper and more fun to make them. We used hardwood for it’s stability and strength.
Measure the width and depth of the table saw rail and cut two pieces with your table saw. This was a thin cut so we made wood push stick designed for cutting small pieces. The slides should slide freely in the grooves and not wiggle too much. Some Glide-coat helped.
2. Cut Sled Deck Piece and Secure It
#01. We made our sled out of 3/4-inch cabinet-grade plywood that measured 18 inches (deep) by 30 inches (wide). This was sufficient for the large box joints and mortise and tenons we were cutting for our hallway closet project.
#02. Protect your table saw with some blue tape. We might have went a little overkill, but I’m messy.
#03. Move your fence into position so that your deck can be placed squarely. We set ours about 14 inches to the right of the throat plate. This was important because for the hallway project, our drawer boxes were nearly 10 inches wide and we needed room for the first dado space (0.5 inches) and to clamp the box joint jig to the sled.
#04. Glue the deck to the rails using CA Glue with an accelerator. We then used a countersinking drill bit to make holes and used some 1-inch screws to further hold the rails in place.
3. Attach Front and Rear Support
We created a front and rear support brace from scrap wood we had laying around. We glued two 3/4-inch pieces together and then attached to the underside using screws.
4. Cut Dado Groove
With a dado stack installed and the proper dado stack width throat piece in place, we slowly raised the blades to break through the bottom of the sled. That’s it, a simple sled to cut some dadoes with!
