How much dado? is enough?

Folks --

I was planning on making some utility storage towers out here, and the question cam out - how much kerf is enough?

The towers are 6 foot tall 3/4 plywood, each "chamber" about 18 inches square. The sections that divide it up were to be set into some dado cuts in the sides and back ( about half of 3/4 in ). glue and some wood screws were to hold the assembly together. The unit is not destined for high mass items. More like a general sort box for light to medium goods as the battle of entropy in my household moves to different rooms. Some bracing may be in the picture for the shelves.

Once I finished this plan in sketchup, the reviewed it for reasonableness ( habit from software engineering ). The question that came up was -- how deep do you need to make a dado slot so it works as support?

Thanks for your replies!

Reply to
Dan
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In 3/4" ply, I usually go 3/8" deep.

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Reply to
B A R R Y

dado dado

Daylight come and me wanna go Day me say day me say day Me say day me say dado Daylight come and me wanna gohome work all night and a drink a rum (daylight come and me wanna go home) Stack banana till the mornin come (daylight come and me wanna go home) Come mister tally man tally me bananas (daylight come and me wanna go home) come mister tally man tally me bananas (daylight come and me wanna go home) lift six foot seven foot eight foot bunch! (daylight come and me wanna go home) six foot seven foot eight foot bunch! (daylight come and me wanna go home) day me say dado (daylight come and me wanna go home) Day me say day me say day me say dado(daylight come and me wanna go home) A beauitful bunch of ripe banana! (daylight come and me wanna go home) hide the deadly black tarantula! (daylight come and me wanna go home) lift six foot seven foot eight foot bunch! (daylight come and me wanna go home) six foot seven foot eight foot bunch! (daylight come and me wanna go home) Day me say dado (daylight come and me wanna go home) Day me say day me say day me say dado(daylight come and me wanna go home) come mister tally man tally me banana (daylight come and me wanna go home) come mister tally man tally me banana (daylight come and me wanna go home) dado dado(daylight come and me wanna go home) day me say day me say day me say dado (daylight come and me wanna go home)

....one of those days...

Reply to
Robatoy

You've got a really sick mind, Robo.. I wanna be you if I grow up!

mac

Please remove [dot]splinters before emailing

Reply to
mac davis

I kinda screwed myself with that one, the damn song is stuck in my head. Is it in yours? If it is, then:

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Reply to
Robatoy

"Robatoy" wrote

Things a little slow up there in the frozen north?

Max

Reply to
Max

LOL

I wish. Angela's 41st birfday, prepping a shipment for Toronto for Monday's installation, main guy wanted a day off up to me arse in work.

Reply to
Robatoy

80 F here today.
Reply to
Robatoy

We do karaoke, and sometimes I couldn't sleep that night because a song was running in my head.. She taught me a cool trick.. The song runs like that until you FINISH it.. Just sing or think the song until the end and it really does go away.. kind of like you've reached the end of a tape and it stops spooling..

mac

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Reply to
mac davis

BETTLEJUICE!

BETTLEJUICE!

BETTLEJUICE!

SHOWTIME!

Dave in [Floresville] Texas

Reply to
NuWave Dave

Catherine O'Hara, who plays the mom and breaks into that song, is funny all the time in real life. I had the pleasure of experiencing that first-hand at a fund raiser.

I think Michael Keaton is some funny guy in Johnny Dangerously.

Reply to
Robatoy

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I use a minimum of about 1/8 of an inch in hardwood and 1/4 inch in plywood and mdf. You can go deeper if you want.

Reply to
ashleyj15

I've always used 1/3 of total thickness as my benchmark for a dado. So with

3/4" plywood, I'd dado 1/4" for shelving. The only thing that would make that depth insufficient is if the shelves sagged enough for it to pull out of the dado.
Reply to
Upscale

Save yourself a little grief.

Don't start doing a full width dado that is a pain in the wazoo to ever get correct.

Use a smaller rabbet joint.

Cut the dado with a "known" width.. like 1/2" using a dado stack or a router bit.

I like 3/8" deep but a 1/4" will do nicely.

Now just trim your rabbet slowly until you get a perfect fit.

Practice this a couple of times and you will not attempt to get a "odd size" piece of plywood fit a perfect cut 3/4" dado.

Dan wrote:

Reply to
Pat Barber

Pat Barber wrote: ...

...

And if the shelving is ply rather than solid material as I gather it is, put the rabbet on the bottom so the weight of the stuff on the shelf doesn't tend to cause split-out or delamination.

For light duty applications, aethestically more pleasing to do other way as it's a cleaner-looking joint if the shelf disappears into the dado, but a shop storage unit may carry a pretty good load and durability trumps in that case...

imo, etc., ...

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Reply to
dpb

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The strongest overall joint will be with a dado no more than 1/4" deep in 3/4" plywood. You want to leave plenty of thickness for the screw body and to not weaken the sides. In solid wood the strongest joint is even shallower, around 1/8", but you need to go at least 3/16" deep in plywood because of the thin plies.

Reply to
Bob Kirkpatrick

When I use this method, I put the rabbet on the top side of the shelf .. .. keeps the weight of the load from pulling the plies apart.

Reply to
"<<<

That's backwards -- the load in the center is pushing down on the lower plies creating tension load at the bottom. Other way up, the center is resting on the lower plies.

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Reply to
dpb

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1/4 to 1/3 thickness of the vertical board, or 1/4" max.
Reply to
Father Haskell

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