Dado Set Selection

[tyler mckenzie]

i have the amana prestige, stunning results. It has built me a bunch of cabinets, i'd buy it again in a heart beat. I just completed a desk were it was a crucial tool(photos).

[scott spencer]

Well, I bought a dado blade after work today. I had decided on the Dial-A-Width Dado even though the poll favored the Super Dado by 3 votes. The guys at Rockler advised against it citing complaints of wobbling and having the setting move during tightening. I had concerns about durability too.
So I wound up with the Super Dado which was also the winner of the poll. Technically the poll spread was 5 since I voted for the Dial-A-Width but bought the Super Dado. Anyway, Thanks everyone for your participation. I'll be checking it out this weekend. I hope it cuts as good as my Premiere Fusion Blade.

The DAW (SD608) and Super Dado (SD508) are the same tooth configuration. The DAW is simply more convenient to adjust widths on. If you like the performance of one, you'll like the performance of the other.

[Gene Howe]

Gene - Does Tenryu make a dado stack with more than 2-tooth chippers or is that their only set?

Scott,
Their Gold Line 8" has only 2-tooth chippers. Still, it produces a very smooth and flat bottom.
Gene

[Peter Quinn]

I have the Forrest in my own shop and it works great. At work we have a Forrest set and a couple of Freud sets. The Forrest cuts a clean, nearly perfect bottom. The Freuds cut a slightly less clean but still very flat bottom. Both make clean cuts in plywood. The forrest set cuts almost as clean as a solid shaper cutter. But to my line of thinking, what the heck difference does it make how the bottom of a dado looks exactly as long as its flat and the edges not torn? So from a functionality stand point both the Freud and the Forrest are about the same IME.

The dial thing seems cool. I have a shaper groover that has a dial-a-width and it is very useful. I watched a Freud DVD a while back that came with a new super dado set at work which showed different dado set ups and used the dial a width to do so. But in my work I very rarely need to shim a dado set to match an exact width. More likely I will run the dado and adjust my parts to match it. Did you ever make all your tennons first on a project then chop your mortises to match?

[Gary Muto]

Scott,
The SD and DAW are the same at the business end but the DAW has separate hubs to allow swapping for Left and Right tilt configurations. There are a lot of additional parts; hubs, screws, etc, all of which can contribute to runout. Technically the arbor flange on my saw is too large too, but I didn't see a problem. It lined up the load with the Dial-a-Width threads but all of the clamping load has to go through them anyway. My arbor nut was also too large to fit in the counter bore, but again I could reverse my tapered washer and it would've worked. Those incompatibilities rasied doubt in my mind so it was easy to agree with the comments at Rockler, which also agreed with the opinions here. I felt most comfortable going with the SD for the long term.

Peter,
I agree that I always Mortise (dado) first and Tenon (rabbet) last, but if I could skip a step and use the plywood as is, it would be a time saver. I also realized that the SD only needs to use shims for two of the standard sizes; 9/32 and another I can't recall at the moment so I thought that I would not need shims very often anyway.

[Gary Muto]

As an update and to close out this poll, I'll give the results. I bought the Freud Super Dado. I had voted for the Dial-A-Width since I planned to by it. Technically then, the results are now 29 for the SD, 20 for the Dial-A-Dado and 28 for the Dado King. I tried it out with some hard Maple I'm currently using on a project and some pine. I'm really happy with the results and could not find any problems. I'm sure that the real test will be with veneer plywood though. I'll bet the close running in the poll is due to the comparable performance of the the different blades. It was a tough decision and the poll made it more fun.