Effective way to make this cut

[Jamie Schmitz]

So I am looking at making a wine rack and was wondering about the most effective way to get nice crisp cuts. I was of course thinking of dado cut but it seems as though it might round the bottom of the piece even if the blade is raised all the way.
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[Lou Ortiz]

What are the dimensions of the cut? Also, not sure why a dado set would round anything. Did you want to make this by machine, hand, or mixed?

[Dave Richards]

By "round the bottom" do you mean it would be concave? Something like this? My sketch may exaggerate it.


I expect Lou is thinking you'd stand it up on edge like you'd do when making box joints. Maybe your notches are deeper than the height of the dado set can reach?

You could turn the work over and run it into the blade again which would leave you with a ridge in the middle that could be taken off witha few swipes of sandpaper. I would be inclined to make the parallel cuts on the table saw to define the width of the notch and take the bottom out with a chisel against a guide clamped on top of the work.

[johnny means]

Router and a template would give you a nice clean cut. Of course, you would need to square out the corners by hand, easily done with a Japan saw or chisel.

[Larry Browning]

It is not clear as to the scale of his drawing. Is that a large panel where each cutout is 4 or 5 inches wide? Or is that width the width of a 3/4" board? A drawing is nice, but a little more detail is going to help a lot. Also, a little more context as to what part of the wine rack we are seeing would be helpful as well.

[Prashun Patel]

Which way is your grain running? If it's running perpendicular to the 'fingers' then (heresy alert) you might rip the bottom piece away from the finger section, then cut rectangles for the fingers and finally re-glue. After sanding, the joint will likely disappear.

[Sam Murdoch]

Jamie - not that you are asking, but my thinking is that most often people over complicate wine storage. Unless you are living on a boat there is no need to hold wine bottles by the neck or otherwise try to keep them from escaping your cabinet. Bottles come in so many different sizes and so your design should be flexible.

Here is an example of shelves in a cabinet (the door is not included in this view). If you decide later that you don't need the divided shelves simply turn them over.

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And here is the real world use after we decided to use the end cabinet differently - You can see that this is an open cabinet.
Bad photo as it was super cropped from a bigger photo but you get the idea.

kitchen 005.jpg

To the specifics of your question, if these cuts are intended to cradle the neck of a bottle a round bottom to the cut would be nice. Though, I agree with Larry, it is not quite clear what you are intending to do. Having said that, if I understand what I am looking at - using plywood or solid lumber - this would be a difficult and dangerous cut on a table saw. A band saw or a router with a template, finishing up with a hand saw or chisel are the best options

[Peter Kelly]

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As above, just make the fingers from separate pieces and glue back together keeping the grain running the long direction.

[Lou Ortiz]

Sam's point is best. If this is deeper than the height to which you can raise your dado, you should bandsaw it, route it to a templat and then finish off the corners. On the design though, if it's going to be cradling a bottle why square this off? It seems to me that a rounded profile would suit much better for that purpose.

[Jamie Schmitz]

Hey guys thanks, and sorry for not being clearer in my post (pet peeve) any ways, I am wanting to make a half lap joint. This is something that I would hope could be done without using hand tools, mechanical to me seems more of an exact science. This will be made out of plywood so chiseling might be difficult. Dave Richards got my initial point about a dado blade setup concaving the bottom. Also one would have to come up with a way to create a stopping point as you cannot see the bottom when cutting. Cut depth would be deeper than height fully reached by 8 in. dado setup so standing the piece up would not work. How would a production shop make these?

half-lap-joint.jpeg smart_wr.jpeg

[Dave Richards]

For something like that it won't make a whole lot of difference if the ends of the slots aren't perfectly flat but there wouldn't be much involved in cleaning them up with a chisel. Setting a stopping point wouldn't be difficult with a stop block and you could use something akin to a box joint jig for registration.

How about doing something like this? You'd get stronger joints and it wouldn't matter what the ends of the notches look like because they wouldn't be visible at all. You could cut the through slot with a router or a bandsaw

[Sam Murdoch]

Now we see. Sorry for oversharing. OK, but the depth of cut is a problem. This isn't a table saw type finger joint. Additionally using plywood with a dado blade for this is heading in to tear out city. I think your 2 best options are routing with a template or as Peter Kelly wrote - rip and glue. The latter would be very safe and pretty fast for one wine rack and made even more sturdy and exact if you have a Festool Domino. Also this would give you the option to be more decorative as you could mix and match species. If you are intent on using plywood how will you deal with the exposed laminations? Dave has illustrated a very rugged set up but you still have the basic problem as to how to make that deep cut.

[Lou Ortiz]

Dave's solution would work well - much, much stronger joint. If you have a router table you can use cut the dado with a straight bit and then use a spiral bit with a stop on the fence to route out the slot. If you have to use a jig, route the dado and use a bit and bearing on a separate jig to cut the slot. Obviously, you would need to be mindful on the set up for the jigs to make sure each piece was registered properly. As Dave pointed out, the rounding wont matter if the joint has shoulders.

[Gus Dundon]

I think watching videos on youtube can help you.

[Dave Richards]

I think watching videos on youtube can help you.

What kind of videos do you have in mind, Gus?