Curious about dado blades

I've noticed whener anyone talks about dado's round here they refer to the stacking type. My only experience with a dado blade is one of the adjustable wobble sort that my father has. Seems to work well enough to me... and it's significantly less expensive. I was wondering if anybody could tell me why I would want to go with a stacking blade? Keeping in mind I'm working on a slim budget and won't be using it all that frequently.

Reply to
Chris Gibson
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regularly on for $20. They work better than either of the Sears sets that were given to me as gifts, and have compared cuts to a sample of the Freud set ($150), and they seem to stack up pretty well.

Digger

Reply to
Digger

they seem to stack up pretty well.

No pun intended I'm sure.

-- Tim

-------- See my page @

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Reply to
Tim V

Didn't even think about that when I typed it. Is there such a thing as "accidental genius"? *LOL*

Digger

Reply to
Digger

I am also very pleased with the $20 HF dado set.

-Doug

Reply to
Doug Winterburn

Ditto.

Reply to
Rich Stern

The set (8 inch) comes with various brass shims so you can set your width in quite fine increments (great for plywood to plywood dados). I did find that messing with how each blade is rotated with respect to each other has a small effect on the smoothness of the dado bottom. Probably a very slight off center hole or tooth grinding issue.

-Bruce

Reply to
Bruce Rowen

Repeating a given width is pretty lucky. I bought the HF because I thought it would be quicker to adjust, than taking off the nut and messing with shims to get exact cuts with my $50 stack set. It ain't.

Reply to
SamsDad

I was talking about the HF $20 stack dado set, not the wobble set. For my needs, it's the best bang for the buck. I've used it on melamine with no chipping, and the bottom of the dado cut is smooth emough for me.

-Doug

Reply to
Doug Winterburn

Up until last week I had an old Craftsman wobble type. It did cut a dado but it looked really bad. I never knew the difference really. When I put the blade on last week my saw started vibrating like crazy. For some reason the blade wasn't cutting a flat bottom but rather a series of "steps" in the dado. I couldn't figure out what was wrong so I bought a Freud at the BORG for $95.00. It's a stacked set and makes a world of difference. It's very smooth when the saw runs - little to no vibration. It cuts a super flat dado and the sides are clean as can be. As other people have said here, you can get an exact width a lot easier too. You still have to take the nut off of the arbor to adjust it (just like the wobble blade) but at least you can write down the combination of chippers & shims you used to duplicate the same width.

Get a stacked set if you can afford it. Lowes also had another stacked set that was $50. I don't recall the manufacturer but you might find out and see if anyone has reviewed it.

Reply to
todd1814

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