The wife bought me a Freud Diablo, 8″ stack dado- When I assembled the blades & chippers for a 3/4″ cut per the destructions, it was demonstrably wide- The set comes with shims, but I didn’t realize it would require fiddling for every cut- Is this to be expected? Thanks-
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Replies
Do you mean, demonstrably wider than a 3/4" piece of plywood? Or demonstrably wider than 3/4"?
Unless you're prepping solid stock precisely to dimension, you're probably going to be doing test cuts and shimming to get your grooves and dados precise anyway. Honestly I doubt this will have a significant impact on your work.
If you're concerned though, hang on... I bet CharlesM (from Freud) will give you a hand if you make your problem quite clear. There are others here who use the Freud stack, so you might post exactly which chippers etc. you put on in which order.
Don't forget, that 3/4" ply is not exactly 3/4". Typically it might be 23/32", so a 3/4" dado slot will be a bit wider.
And if your using any of the Chinese Birch that is everywhere now you'll see anything from 11/16ths to a week 3/4"
Doug
There a couple of possibilities that explain your problem.
o You do not have the blades and chippers properly oriented to each other in the stack. Be sure that the teeth of the chippers are cleaning within the gullets of the blades.
o You saw alignment is off. If the dado is not running absolutely parallel to the miter slot, you will end up with a larger dado. Similarly, if your fence is not parallel to the miter slot or your miter gauge is not exactly 90 degrees, you will end up with a wider groove.Howie.........
Howie: Those are two very good thoughts- I'll go see- Thanks!
with plywood these days being any range of sizes, pretty much every setup is a trial and error process. I wish I could trade-in my Freud stacked dado for a dial-a-width dado set...
You mean the kind with a hub in the middle that you turn in order to get the marks to line up with the line? You still need to do test cuts and you don't get a flat bottom. OK, on a narrow dado, it won't matter but on a full width dado and a lot of pieces being attached, it makes it harder to align everything. Also, the edges aren't as clean on a dial-a-width, which again, won't matter if the pieces going into the dado have a shoulder.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
The SD60x Freud Dial-A-Width dado is a standard stack dado that has an adjustable hub on one outer blade. The adjustment is in very small increments and takes the place of using shims. It's basically the same as their standard SD50x stack dado and produces absolutely flat bottom dados and very clean cuts in hardwood veneers.Howie.........
Hi Yogi ,
I have an older Freud 8" dado set and it actually cuts a 13/16" dado with all the blades used . There is one thinner blade that may need to be left out to achieve a 3/4" dado .
good luck dusty
That's what this does, 13/16, though the destructions call for 6 1/8 inch blades & chippers- When I substitute the one blade which is lower (1/16) for one of the others, then it falls just under 3/4- Hafta screw around with the shims, whose thicknesses are not indicated- I'd have thought for a hundred bucks worth of Freud, the stack would be 3/4 when it's sposed to be 3/4- Another illusion up in smoke- We paid for what we got when we thought we were getting what we paid for-
Reminds me of a Christmas carol....... "Ooooh welllll, oh wellll..." Thanks for your thoughts-
Yogi,I am confused since I have never seen a Freud dado that cut 1/16" too wide. Maybe a few thousandths of an inch but never that much. If you want 3/4" you stack the outside blades with four 1/8" chippers and you get 3/4". The only way I can even visualize that happening is if the teeth on the outer blades were not ground at all and even then you be talking maybe 0.020", not 0.062". The chipper bodies should all be 1/8" thick so four of them stack to 1/2" and the outer blades add 1/8" each to the width (including the tip width). Which dado set do you have and what type of measuring device are you using?
Charles M
Freud America, Inc.
<<< "Which dado set do you have and what type of measuring device are you using?" >>>
Charles- I have the Diablo, 8" stack dado- I'm measuring with a machinist's rule- I'm also getting a little nervous- Did I screw this up?
Thanks for your interest-
Charles- I stacked,per the destructions, 2 outer blades & 2 "D" chippers for a 1/2 inch cut, and it came to right at a 1/32 shy of 1/2"- Added the other 2 "D" chippers for a 3/4" cut with the same 1/32 deficiency- What do you think?
Are you measuring the stack, or a groove you've cut with it?My goal is for my work to outlast me. Expect my joinery to get simpler as time goes by.
I second John D's suggestion, cut a groove with the stack to get a true measurement, it's the cut that counts, not the cutter.
Also, as has been already mentioned, the width of the cut you need will typically be an odd dimension and shims will almost always be necessary. Rarely is anything in woodworking precisely 1/2" or 3/4", so it isn't worth worrying about the accuracy of the stacked cutters, as long as they cut well and can be shimmed to the size you want.
John W.
John-
Thanks, and I expect you're right about things rarely being precisely 1/2" or 3/4" in woodworking- But a stack dado is steel, a bit of a different matter-
Anyway, I'll plan on using the shims- Thanks again-
The groove-
I bet a lot of us are as curious as CharlesM is. There are a few ways I can think of a dado stack getting too wide, but inspection should rule most of them out.
Charles already talked about checking the teeth, on the theory that some teeth weren't ground down right, it could make the cut too wide. Seems awfully farfetched, though.
Another possibility is, what if there's some foreign material on the blade bodies? That way they wouldn't snug up tight against each other, yielding a wide stack. Any of that packing plastic coating still on any of your blades, either on the teeth or stuck to the blade bodies?
What if a blade is actually bent? That might prevent it from seating straight and perpendicular to the arbor.
Finally, is it possible that some chippers aren't rotated correctly, so the teeth prevent the bodies from snugging up tightly against each other.
HowardAcheson pointed out that if your stock is not moving exactly perpendicular to the axis of rotation of the blade, you'll get a wide groove (sort of a small version of a cove-cut setup). You can see what he means... if you slide the stock straight over a standard 1/8" blade, you'll get a 1/8" kerf. To take the degenerate case, if you slide your stock from left to right instead, you'll get a huge cove cut as wide as the distance from the front to the back of the blade. Are you quite sure your fence (if you're doing a rip cut) or miter slot (if you're using it to guide your stock) is exactly perpendicular to your spinning blade? Plenty of folks here can give you hints on how to check this.
Saw blades just don't sit there and get thicker (unless you have a monstrous coat of rust, which I'm pretty sure you'd have noticed :) ). So barring a very unlikely manufacturing defect, you're almost certainly looking at a bad saw setup, or an introduced problem with the blades.
I'd bet even money HowardAcheson had it right all along. :)
My goal is for my work to outlast me. Expect my joinery to get simpler as time goes by.
Edited 2/10/2006 6:39 pm by John_D
Yogi,The SD200 Series is manufactured to produce cut widths that are slightly under the nominal sizes. This is primarily due to the fact that many are sold through the home center channels and many of the purchasers are users that are less knowledgeable than those on this forum and with less accurate equipment. For instance, as Howie alluded, if the saw fence is not parallel to the dado the groove will be wider. So by making it cut a little undersized we are pleasing more of the masses. I apologize for the fact that you will be required to shim for exact 3/4". At the same time, it is rare that a groove will need to be exactly on size due to material variances.BTW, I agree that the shims would be more convenient if marked and have pushed to make this happen. In the meantime, they should be pretty evident by feel if you compare to the chart.
Charles M
Freud America, Inc.
Charles- Thanks once again for your interest and input-
Hey Yogi ,
Don't substitute the thin blade , take it out . On the old set I have I get a 3/4" cut when I use the 4 chippers and 2 outer blades . Mine is the scribe point , saw the price Still on the box from maybe 15 years or so ago about $200 , I have had great service from the set and rely on them daily .
I know you will be happy with this product , get it figured out and your set .
dusty
didn't realize it would require fiddling for every cut..
I thought THAT was part of Woodworking!
I have the Systi-Matic 8" dado set and use home made zero clearance inserts on my saw. When I first got the set, I spent quite a bit of time playing with the chipper/shim combinations to get the right widths for 1/2" and 3/4" (nominal) dados. When I had them right, I wrote them on the inserts. This quickly gets me in the ballpark and I then run some test cuts to bring it home. I don't bother measuring the stack since I need to "tweak" most setups anyway. I can usually get what I need by changing the last shim to add or subtract a few thousandths.
I also threw out the set of metal shims I got with the cutter. I found out that they wanted to drop into the threads on the saw arbor and cock the setup by a few thousandths. Not only was the cut bad, but the vibration was awful.
I got a shim set made from thin, flexible, magnetic material (sorta like thin refrigerator magnets) and they're fantastic. They stay put as I build my "stack" so nothing gets "cocked" and they're permanently marked so I'm not guessing which one is which. Most setups take less than five minutes.
I got these thru Western Tool Supply in Salem OR.
Dave 45- The after market shims sound like a good deal- Do they fit snugly on the arbor? I know what you mean about getting caught in the threads of the arbor, but I'd not want them so loose as to settle "out of round" on the arbor either- You get a flat bottom with these shims? I'll get in touch with Western Tool Supply and see what they have-
Thanks for your thoughts- I'm much obliged-
Yogi -
They fit snugly enough. The important thing is that they lay flat against the blades and chippers and stay in place while you finish making your stack. I don't know about you, but I'm way behind the curve as far as evolving an extra hand - lol.
One other thing about the "stock" metal shims was that I got a slight curl in the arbor hole when they slipped down into the arbor threads and I tightened the stack. I had to take them to the anvil (well, a short piece of railroad track) and beat the curl out with a ball peen hammer. Overall, a PITA!!
If you have a Post Tool store nearby, you can get them there, too.
I had the same deal, with the shims getting caught in the threads of the arbor- Never heard of Post Tools, but I'll talk with Western Tool Supply- Thanks again-
Please don't be offended by this post. Since we have been told that the dado set is designed to cut slightly undersized, and since your set seems to cut slightly wide, is there any chance that you have the outside blades reversed? I believe that the teeth of the outside blades are wide to the inside of the cut to help clean the spaces left by shims. Otherwise, I'd go with the blade not parallel to the slot or fence diagnosis.
Lee Valley sells a set of color-coded shims for dado stacks.
Bob- Thanks for the thought- Think I screwed up my original message re the cut being wide- I've tried numerous cuts since, and they're all just about 1/32 undercut- I've carefully checked my stack, checked the blade for parallel to the slot and the mitre perpendicular to the blade (normal 1/8 inch blade cuts dead on- Haven't used the fence with it yet- Thought I'd keep things as simple as possible)-
Not offended, just a little puzzled by it all- Thanks again-
I was wondering about the wide issue, you did state that the cuts were undersized in the original post.
That out of the way, I bought a set of magnetic shims for my stack dado set to fix. Personally, I would rather have the stack come up 1/32 short and then be able to shim it, than have it be 1/32 too wide and cuss at it.1 - measure the board twice, 2 - cut it once, 3 - measure the space where it is supposed to go 4 - get a new board and go back to step 1
Yeah, Dave 45 (above) did the same thing & directed me to Western Tool Supply- Sounds like a great idea- Re: whether it's better the dado cut over or under the mark is moot to me- I'd have thought when a dado with a name like Freud on it said 3/4", then that's what it would be- That would be my "druthers"-
Since a great may people use 3/4" plywood, and plywood is a hair short of its stated size, the 1/32" short might be just right for plywood and could be shimmed ot to full 3/4" for solid wood. - even then, I have bought s4s lumber and had differances in thickness and then had to plane down to lowest common denominator - usually a shade under 3/4"1 - measure the board twice, 2 - cut it once, 3 - measure the space where it is supposed to go 4 - get a new board and go back to step 1
Might be a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't. Solid 1x lumber is milled to 3/4" and "3/4" inch plywood has been ~1/32" undersized for years. Ain't no way an unshimmed setup can work for both kinds of dados - lol.
I just consider this one of life's little mysteries.
Yogi
I have the same set and what i did as make up a sample board of the various widths to match what thickness of material and mark the sample board as to witch chippers and shims that were used. Keep handy and you will soon have all the sizes that you could possabuly need and will make set ups a breeze.
john
johnR5
There's the best idea yet, I'd say- Kind of like a table of contents- Thanks very much- I'll make one up-
John, that is an oldie but goodie tip that I have used for years and I read it somewhere at that. I also put in a few differant size T nuts for quick sizing some machine screws.1 - measure the board twice, 2 - cut it once, 3 - measure the space where it is supposed to go 4 - get a new board and go back to step 1
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