Adjusting Dado Width

[John Motzi]

Ever since I watched the video "Mastering Woodworking Machines" by Mark Duginske, I have been keeping sticky-notes pads in the shop for use as shims in making fine adjustments.

Today I needed to run some dados to house cabinet backs and drawer bottoms of 1/2" prefinished birch plywood. I set my dado blade (Forrest) for 1/2" which produced a dado that was a bit too narrow for a reliable fit. I didn't realize that my dado shims were 5/8" bore (my saw has a 1" arbor) so I had to devise another way. Since I needed to add about 0.020" to the dado width, I used stacks of five sticky-notes on the inside face of the outside blade as shown in the picture. The fit on the resulting dado was too loose - I could easily slide two sticky-notes in the void so I removed two sticky-notes from each stack. The resulting dado had the tight but not too tight fit I was looking for.

John Motzi
Downingtown, PA

[Jim Becker]

A very elegant...and "reasonably priced"...solution, John!! Good tip.

[Alan Turner]

John
I am surprised that you are not worried about the disposable nature of these shims, but then perhpoas you do reuse them. (: Pretty clever.

[Steve Jenkins]

another good thing to use for shims is manila folders. I cut circles about 3" in diameter with a a center hole for the arbor. the folder material is .010 thick and are reusable.

[Bryan Nuss]

Here is a place to get 1" dia. shims, if you want to buy some.


http://www.justsawblades.com/systimatic/accessories.htm