I'd had the dado since getting the saw (secondhand), but typically opted for a router when considering dadoing or rabbeting material. Or I used the Unisaw dedicated to flat bottomed box joints for short runs.
Yesterday I had a project that seemed custom designed for using the slider, with tall (7') relatively narrow (15-1/2") case sides where I thought dados ad rabbets would make it a cleaner build. Tried it out and it worked out great. The fence stops made indexing wonderfully fast, easy and repeatable. The largest (most time consuming) effort was replacing the throat which someone in the engineering department decided should be bolted from the bottom. It would have been much more straightforward using flathead allen bolts captive in the plate and threaded into the cast-iron top. I suspect European safety regulations prohibit use of dado heads so the need wasn't perceived.
There was also a bit of effort sizing the head to the material thickness. The cherry plywood varied quite a bit more than I would have expected. I opted for a slot in the middle of the range easily achieved with shims. One surprise was the amount of rearward pressure. The cutting head is a 6" 24 tooth design marketed by Laguna but built in Canada. It looks like the same head distributed by Felder and manufactured by FS Tool. If I hadn't been so lazy I would have turned the fence around. Instead I just put on a lever clamp and went slowly. I also probably should have moved the fence to the center of the slider for a smoother cut. But I had more full sheets to size and didn't want to have to move it back.
Anyway, it was nice to use the saw for something new and find it worked so successfully.
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And yea...wow...nice shop!
Originally Posted by Jim Andrew
