The Woodshop Shed

Shop Made Sliding Table for Tablesaw

It's kind of rough around the edges, and I'm still tweaking it, but here's my version of a sliding table for my table saw.

It gives me about 31" before the blade.

There are three 28" full-extension drawer slides (mounted flat), that control the range of motion before the blade. They're mounted under the top-most level, so as to allow only the top-most level to be pulled back, before the blade. This reduces the weight of the top that slides all the way back.

And there are three 24" full-extension drawer slides (mounted flat), that control the range of motion past the blade. This reserves most of the weight for when sliding beyond the blade (which involves both the top and the second level together), which doesn't usually require the full extension.

Even with the sliding table, I managed to keep the entire table saw setup completely mobile (ignore my claustrophobic shop.)

The beauty of using drawer slides, is that the table has a wide range of forward and backward motion, but the table itself doesn't have to be that long, like other sliding table setups I've seen.

The stacked forward and backward tables can be "locked" in place, because the slides have a built-in locking feature that would have kicked-in when the "drawers" were closed. It's nice because when I move the saw around the shop, the tables don't slide around willy-nilly, but they're easily pushed out of their locked positions when needed. They're in their locked positions in the first pic.


It was all based on the sliding table and cross-cut fence I found here.


Here is a video of how the table moves. It was taken with my cell, just to get something out quick, but I'll post some better footage soon.

Here is another (better) video of the table in action while cross-cutting a wide panel.


For any questions at all, or if you want a pic from different angle, by all means, just ask in the comments.


Thanks for visiting.



Update:
There had been an issue with the sliding table top-level sagging a bit when it was pulled all the way back before the blade, so as to accommodate a wide panel for instance. So I came up with the roller assembly you can see in the bottom three pics. I used two shower door roller replacement kits I got at the orange big-box store. It seems to have worked really well. There's a fraction of the sag that was there before. I'm pleased.

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