Dado stack alternatives

[stealthwolf]

I've been watching woodworking YouTube videos. The Americans use dado stacks in their table saws to cut rebates or "rabbets" as they call them - not only on the edge of wood pieces but also in the middle (eg for shelves).

Having had a google, it looks like dado stacks are essentially illegal in the UK due to safety issues (found a good post by J&K). But what are the alternatives? Router table? Hand plane?

 

[Roger928]

You can have a grooving unit in the UK. Made by felder.
Axminster in the UK are now importing American made Powermatic machines.
They have 20 table saws in their line up and I'm pretty sure they all come as standard with dado facility.
Though I expect axminster won't be able to touch the table saws due to UK/EU legislation regarding fitting the dado stack. Which on American soil is traditionally a stack of saw blades afaik.

 

[vinn]

The major difficulty will probably be insurance. Rightly so - I know two guys who lost fingers using Dado sets.
There's lots of older Wadkins machinery available but ...

Depending on what you intend to do, and how many pieces are involved - the traditional way to go is by using manual/hand planes in metal or wood.
Shaped cutters are available in sets, and you can shape your own profiles from steels for home made cutters.

If you only want to cut rebates then an elec planer will do.
Dont even think about using a Router table - the poor mans spindle moulder.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

You don't need to buy a Felder! Simplest approach to make a housing (dado is an American term ) is probably a 1/2in router and a home-made T-square, especially if the timber matches the diameter of a particular cutter (cutters are available from 2mm to 22mm or more in 1mm increments):

Above: This is where you want to cut a housing
Below: A simple jig to guide the router can be made using a piece of 18mm plywood or MDF and a piece of 2 x 1in PAR softwood as the fence.

In this instance the material would be clamped onto the bench and overhang it slightly to accommodate the extra thickness of the fence (22mm softwood onto 18mm MDF). The material is clamped onto the bench and the jig is clamped or screwed onto the material (if it is MDF the holes can be filled and sanded later). The base of the router runs against the T-square "blade" and the housing is ideally worked in multiple passes increasing the depth each time. The fence will end up with a notch cut-out by the router cutter:

This notch can subsequently be used to align the fence to where the grooves are required:

A plus of using a router and a jig is that with appropriate stops (or pencil mare and careful routing) stopped housings can be cut (all but impossible to achieve with a table saw)

This is one way you achieve that set-back shelf look which is seen in much professionally-made furniture and is far more stylish IMHO

To fit that way the front corners of the shelves are notched (jigsaw and chisel) and the shelves are slid in from the rear.

There are other techniques which allow a more precise fit, where an exact size cutter isn't available, but the approach shown above is doable on a construction site, cheap and fast (and it doesn't require £5k to £10k of Felder, either, or even £1k of cast-iron table saw)

As Vinn so rightly says, edge rebates can be easily handled by a bearing rebate cutter in a hand-held router, or even by a plain straight cutter and a side fence - so not even a router table is required (and in any case, I'd be hard pushed to want to make one on site!)

Personally I don't much care for stacked dado sets (on table saws), having used them professionally in the past. It's worth bearing in mind that they can't really be made to work well on a lightweight table saw or site saw (e.g. my own DW745) without adding considerably to the risks taken by the operator (namely me) and that they require the user to manufacture special guarding for safe use - and we all know what people do with guarding.

 

[Roger928]

Another alternative is the HK85 16 - 25mm grooving unit.

 

[tomfe]

@JobAndKnock I like your jig

How can you use a dado set with your crown guard and riving knife if place?
Those darn daft Americans.

You can use a dado at home quite happy however.

 

[stealthwolf]

Thanks guys. This guy is one of the few woodworking channels that I'm subscribed to.

He uses a dado stack to ensure the rebates are identical for shelves.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Another alternative is the HK85 16 - 25mm grooving unit.

If you don't mind me saying you seem to love coming up with eye-wateringly expensive solutions where cheap ones will suffice. But maybe that's the site chippy in me coming to the fore .

How can you use a dado set with your crown guard and riving knife if place?

You can't. The riving knife needs to be removed (in any case it won't do anything for trenching bcause you are not parting the timbers, only grooving them so the pinch "phenomenon" isn't applicable) and the guard (crown or otherwise) needs to be supported either directly off the rip fence or from an overhead arm, like this one (Google home-made crown guards):

or this commercially available one:

Even Axminster do an after market kit:

Those darn daft Americans

Surely it's more ignorance than anything else, on the part of amateur woodworkers over here? There's an old saying about "if all you have is a hammer, then everything else is a nail...." which is in part about ignorance of the fuller picture. In commercial terms a lot of American industry uses mainly European woodworking machinery these days, with European safety features (intact) partly because European insurers don't like paying for stuff like missing fingers....... American DIYers are a whole different ball park in my experience - and it's amazing that there aren't more cripples over there with some of the stuff I've read as "advice" on Yankee sites
.

You can use a dado at home quite happy however.

And you can douse yourself with petrol and set fire to yourself, too.... it doesn't necessarilly make it a genius idea to do so. The thing is to ensure that you understand the principles of guarding - because you brain and "common sense" (is there such a thing?) are not primary safety devices - training, knowledge and above all adequate guards are (and are proven to work)

 

[Deleted member 174758]

He uses a dado stack to ensure the rebates are identical for shelves.

But how is that different from using a fixed width router cutter (which will generate the same width slot every time)? One thing often overlooked about trenching heads and dado sets is that every time you change the width of the cutter set you have to faff around making trial cuts and using shims to get the width bang-on (same applies to any variable width tooling in my experience). I don't know that American amateurs take that into consideration a lot - a trade woodworker, however, regards it as a waste of time, very often, and is far more lileky to seek a faster, simpler, cheaper alternative.

 

[JohnD]

I've seen skirting boards (in small quantities to match existing in old houses) done with a router.

And for larger amounts, obtained from a yard with a spindle cutter who made batches for stock. Perhaps because in that particular town, lots of houses built over a 30-year period used the same standard mouldings, so it was good business for the merchant, with a persistent dribble of renovators.

 

[Roger928]

It all comes down to how much trenching you are doing. If you were on a machine all day trenching grooves then the circular cutter head will ultimately be a lot more efficient.
Whether its horizontal in the spindle moulder or vertical in a saw bench.

 

[tomfe]

You can't.

This was more of a dig at the American DIY especially the youtubers who when they get a saw remove all guarding, and then think of ways like the saw stop to protect themselves.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

This was more of a dig at the American DIY especially the youtubers who when they get a saw remove all guarding, and then think of ways like the saw stop to protect themselves.

Yes, I get your point. I was really trying to point out that the dado head should only be part of a larger equation which includes adequate guarding - something that Yankee weekend warriors seem to underestimate (hence my comments earlier about "common sense", etc). As for SawStop - an expensive sticking plaster solution when good engineering and a bit of training (summed-up in this downloadable poster) can deliver much the same result?

It all comes down to how much trenching you are doing. If you were on a machine all day trenching grooves then the circular cutter head will ultimately be a lot more efficient.

Yes, OK, but if you were trenching for shelving all day then a crosscut saw (such as a radial arm saw) would be a far safer option as it is relatively easy to guard and far easier to set-up for multiples of crosscuts. We used to crank-out cheap "back-of-house" fixed shelving for shop and restaurant fitouts just that way in the 1970s, before Spur shelving became so popular. By that time everyone was asking for "adjustable library shelving" (on Tonk strips) on the visible stuff so any need for good quality fixed shelving simply evaporated.

I must say that I'm intrigued by the Mafell MF26, particulary by its' ability to kerf (with the appropriate blade) which could be handy on curved counters, etc, but at £1400 or so I'll probably never be able to justify it when there are so many other (cheaper) ways to achieve the same result and when I cannot personally see the need for a volume tool such as that