I see that Lowe's has the Freud 8" stacked dado set, but the description says "for veneer, plywood, and laminates." Will this also work well with regular hard and soft woods?
Mike
P.S. I tried the Oldham 7" adjustable dado blade and it was crap; it didn't even cut a square-bottomed dado.
I have the SD508 model number and it says, "Ultimate cuts in veneered plywood, melamine, chipboard and solid woods" on the container. It does all those very well..
upand_at snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in news:1157821526.562057.226850 @p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com:
Freud's SD208 does hard and softwood dados pretty well. Even for a newbie, in a Shopsmith. And it works pretty well when the newbie upgrades the saw, too.
The tool is a good starting point. I haven't felt the need to upgrade the dado set yet.
Patriarch
I just bought a Freud dado set today (it was DD208, though) and I unfortunately have to return it. The left side blade is a little larger in diameter than the rest of the set and causes a stepped cut instead of a flat bottom.
Ugh, Mike
Hey Mike,
You might want to check that the inside (Left) blade is flat against the arbor support face. I had the same problem and had to slightly snug up the arbor nut and then rotate the blade set to make sure it was in all the way.
If it's not then the blade will run out of round which will cut deeper giving the apprance of being a larger diameter.
Try switching the outside blades and see if it does the same thing.
Gary
An adjustable or "wobble dado" is ground when it is set at a certain thickness, somewhere around 9/16". At that thickness, you will get a flat bottom. Wider gives a concave bottom and narrower yields a convex bottom. Regardless, I have never seen one that gives a really clean cut.
When a blade says is for veneer, etc., that should mean that the blades have a zero or negative hook angle (the teeth lean back). This gives a clean cut. It will work well in solid wood; you just won't have as fast of a feed rate because it won't cut as easily as a blade with a positive hook (teeth leaning into the cut).
use mine to cut hard wood & soft wood all the time works great, only way to get a better dado is with a router
A wobble dado does not cut a convex bottom at any setting.
I have a double-blade wobble set. The bottom of the dado is dependent on the position when fastened to the arbor. I never really understood why, but it works as described on the instruction sheet. A blade for laminates and ply has finer teeth although it should work for solid woods as well.
Really? Are you sure about that?
The blades were likely ground at the widest setting. In that case, they would not be round. By controlling their position in relation to each other, they could be set in such a way that it would offset the round bottom problem at any spacing.
I also have the SD208. Never had any problems. No matter what type of material I cut iwth it.
Bill
If it's the same as the one sold at Home Depot (model DD208) it'll cut hard and softwood fine. I bought mine about a year ago for $90 something, and have found it's a good dado set.
If you want a less expensive stacked set, I noticed recently that Grizzly[1] has one for $49. I don't have any experience with this set, so I don't know if it's any good. But the price is interesting, compared to what's at Home Depot and Lowes.
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