I personally find woodworking and crafting fun. So, over the last couple of weeks, perhaps more, I set to work making a crosscut sled for my table saw and a dice box in addition.
For those of you who may not know what a crosscut sled is, I’ll explain and show the pictures.
Generally, a table saw is for ripping boards. It has a fence and a circular saw blade that protrudes from a flat and level table. The fence can be moved right and left, but it always stays parallel to the blade. This will allow you to take a board and slide it along the table so that you can cut its width perfectly using the fence as a width stopper while the blade cuts your desired width the entire length of the board.
However, the table saw usually has tracks built into the surface to place a miter gauge. This gauge allows a person to make a crosscut at different angles. The crosscut sled however, always sits 90 degrees from the blade and has a fence that extends across the cutting area so that small, perfect cuts are possible. It’s very useful for making cuts for smaller items, which a miter saw lacks due to its cutting area.
So, I put my first cross cut sled together and then I went ahead and built a box to roll my dice in.
This project was incredibly fun. I cut the walls of the box in one solid piece, and then I cut out the grooves that will hold the bottom of the box in. Then I cut the edges at a 45 degree angle and pieced them together with glue.
I slid the base in after connecting two sides, and then I fit the entire thing together, gluing the project together.
For the base, I cut it seperate from the bottom of the box so that it can be removed. The reason for this inclusion was so that I could glue felt to the base. I used scrap wood from my crosscut sled so it’s a little heavier than I intended. Regardless, the box is awesome, and incredibly lucky. I rolled so many 20s the day that I first introduced it to the D&D group.
I’m pretty sure everyone is jealous.
~Michael C. Sahd, author of The Unfettered Child and Assassin Marked