I’ve recently been doing a bunch of wood work to my house. Shelves, book cases, and so on. When I was in shop class, many moons ago, I remember our shop teacher telling us table saws should be used for cutting boards along the grain while radial arm saws are to be used cutting across the grain. So that is what we did. I see people on television using a sled to make cuts across the grain. The sled contraption seems easy enough to build on my own, but is it safe. Is there more chance for kickbacks while cutting across the grain on a table saw. Or, should I just use my compound miter saw for cross cuts. Just curious.
The crosscut sled is pretty safe, especially the designs that straddle the blade and run through both miter slots. The reason for having them is that most people don’t have a radial arm saw. In fact the hullabaloo over those as the most dangerous saw ever runs high on the web.
Your CMS will work fine if it can cut wide enough. I use my CMS for boards under 6" and my sled for boards wider. I have a one sided sled, and I need to build a deeper, both sided sled.
When crosscutting on a table saw, be sure to not use the fence, or if you do, only in very controlled circumstances, but you better know what’s going on. Because that is a very dangerous configuration. Which is why sleds are preferred, they don’t rely on the fence and therefore you don’t have the cutoff trapped between the blade and the fence which can kick back into you or disappear and possibly allow your hand(s) to come into contact with the blade.
Yep, what Ford said.
You can use both tools (table saw and Radial) to do both tasks (Ripping and Crosscutting) Each is more efficent in one task and not as much in the other. This is in part due to the action of the stock passing through the blade, and in part due the type of blade that is typical of each machine.
With table saws and cross cutting you need to support the stock as it passes through the blade, you should not do this using the fence as you run the risk of rocking the work piece along the short edge on the fence and causing the blade to bind producing a kickback. Most miter gauges are not set up well enough to suppport the stock along the long edge and moving the stock directly atop the table saw surface can cause the stock to shift, so cross cut sleds are used where in effect the whole table with stock secured moves relative to the blade. I will use a crosscut sled if I am doing a lot of parts with a specific angle, and set up a jig that when done with the project can be set aside for future use if needed to make the same thing again, without having to set things up again.
Radials work best in in cross cut because the stock is held firmly against the fence and the blade is brought through the workpiece, my radial can rip if I rotate the carriage 90 degrees, I never have used it for this for fear that it will grab the work piece and send it sailing across the shop, besides why would I when I have a perfectly fine table saw.
Blades also play a role in how well each machine will do. In general, you want less teeth on the blade for ripping and more for Cross cutting. So if you have you radial setup for cross cutting and tablesaw set up for ripping there is less setup time needed for switching between functions.
I need a table saw, I’ve no glass in the window on the south end of my shop, and have destroyed any number of florescent lights doing this.
Sometimes a cross cut is best made with a standard circular saw (or hand saw even!).
I have friends who are completely stumped when they don’t have a CMS or ‘chop saw’, let alone a table saw.
I have a friend who lugged a sliding CMS in the back of his car (little Honda trunk wouldn’t close with it and other tools, like an air tank/gun to sink 6-10 finish nails) to a job 100 miles away. He had to make exactly four cross cuts. Yep - regular, good old fashioned 90 degree cross cuts in 5/4 planking! Pulled out the CMS all for that.
He didn’t even have the ability to even think about a hand saw. I don’t even know if he owns one.
The last few crosscuts I have made in 1" x 3" Walnut have been with a Ryoba too much fun 
Skipper Too makes a very good point about the type of blade used. And remember kids, always, always, always unplug your saws before changing the blades.
I have one of the old Ryobi portable 8" radial saws which I mated to a typewriter table to make it portable, and I love it for field work. Yeah, it’s been recalled, and the 10" Craftsman table saw that I inherited from my Dad couldn’t be sold today, either. Respect power tools, don’t be an idiot, and you won’t get hurt.
I have a commercial woodworking shop with 3 tablesaws, 2 radial arm saws and 2 chop saws. We use 1 radial arm for rough cutting long stock. The other is used for finish cutting to size. These saws are never used for any other operations and the 90º setting is never changed.
We rip lumber to width on tablesaws but also use them for crosscutting wide pieces with the aid of shop-built sleds. We also use the standard miter gauge with a fence attached for crosscutting. Depending on the stock being cut I can get better accuracy using the tablesaw for crosscuts than either of the radial arms.
I also feel that crosscutting on the tablesaw is as safe as any other tool.
Bwahahahaha. I have a 150 tooth brazed carbide tip blade on the radial arm saw at my shop. I use it to crosscut extruded aluminium channel. Once and only once did I try to rip the aluminium. An 8 foot long piece tore out of my hands at a million miles an hour and bent the shit out of itself when it hit the concrete wall.
I knew it might happen and stood where I did and held onto it so I wouldn’t get creamed. It was worth a try because cutting and trimming 200 pieces otherwise took me so long I barely broke even doing the job.
Back to the OP, croscutting on a table saw is fine if you avoid kickback by not binding against the fence and standing to the side if you think it might anyways. On a big board I sometimes crosscut with a circular saw over-length and then run just the end on the tale saw an eighth of and inch to square it up.