Any easier way of making half-lap joints?

[Andy Dingley]

Hateful things!

If you want to saw dados like this, at least use an American style dado set - a couple of sawblades at the sides, spacer washers between and a couple of chipper blades as needed.

You can buy US dado sets easily in the UK. It's a bit harder to find a saw that can use them. You need an insert made up for each width, you need a decent length of arbor on the saw, and if you're industrial(ish) you have to worry about PUWER 98 and the spin down time limits, which are quite hard to achieve (heavy DC injection braking will unscrew a basic locknut).

Wobble saws are a pain to set up for accurate width and absolutely fecking lethal for kickback.

[stuart noble]

I'd use a circular saw for speed, but you would be doing "blind" cuts i.e. the blade can't clear itself, so is slightly prone to kickback. On balance it sounds like a router might suit you better. Nothing much can go wrong, and you'll find loads of uses for it. FWIW planers have given me nothing but grief over the years :-)

[MM]

Re the planers, yes, I really haven't used mine much, either. Like, yesterday, I needed to trim the assembled joints on the bed frame, and there's no way I'd have used the power plane. Too unwieldy. I used my smaller jack plane instead, even if it did mean spending 15 minutes first honing a really sharp edge as I was going to be cutting across end grain.

MM

[MM]

Another possible alternative to a band saw for getting square cuts is one of the new power saws, e.g. from Bosch. If one fixed up a jig, one would only need to hold the saw in the jig and let the motor do the work, i.e. just allow the saw to "sink" down through the cut.

MM

[Rupert Bear]

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Honestly,,

You say you have a fear of cicular saws,,,

So do I ,, I think anyone with couple of greycells to rub togther will also have the fear,, or perhaps call it a respect for the tool.. ( all important)

I think it is very healthy to think this way,, it is how people keep all of their fingers.. You will find most people who work with them use push sticks for tricky bits near the end of cut...

I never did get hold of a decent saw bench with rise and fall and tilt,, But with the table jigs I expect you could easy set one up for trenching out a few joints in small stuff..

I used this device for so much of that kind of work,, it was really good,,and safe too because your fingers were never near the blade..

the wood was accurately sized I could easily cut many tennons or half ones,, square and true with great precision..

I think you should consider biting the bullet and try a circular..

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