Band Saw Sled for Small Pieces of Wood...

Made with the Laser Engraver...

I had a need to cut multiple dowels and didn't have access to the table saw right away.

I drew a simple sled - a foundation design for more enhancements and sizes - which I could burn and assemble with glue.

I built this at TechShop San Jose - www.techshop.ws

It's made from 1/4" MDF - one of my favorites for laser cutting and assembling.  Great for Jigs! Cheap!

The height of the fence is 1/4" in this case - this was enough to address the 1/4" dowels I needed to cut.  I can easily upgrade this to a higher fence/sled for larger stock - 1/2" dowels, for example.

I designed it with a slew of mortise / tenon pairs to make it easy to align the sled pieces.  If the laser burns hot, you can still get a nice 90degree fence with the alignment help these provide.

I hadn't thought of it, but this fence could be easily modified to cut at various angles.

Here's the Corel Draw 5 file for the pieces.  I won't put power/speed settings here - those'll vary with the laser.

The tenons are mostly the same.  The one on the front of the sled base has a wedge, as does the one at the rear of the sled base - where they attach the runner to the sled.  This keeps us from having sharp edges.

I used a bit of yellow glue and clamped-up the pieces.

I estimate it cost about 15 cents for all the mdf - very cheap indeed.  It's easy enough to make this out of scraps.

REMEMBER!
Careful when you cut the dowels - do NOT pull the sled back through the band saw blade to prevent pulling the blade out of alignment or off its track / wheel.

Since it's so cheap, cutting all the way through the sled is fine, if it fits your needs.