I have almost no experience with woodworking and am wondering which tool would be best to make the following cut. (I can make it fairly well w/ hand tools, but curious what the best approach would be with power tool).
I have a piece of poplar 1/2" thick, 9" long, 4.5" wide. I want to cut a rectangle out of the corner of the board to make a finger. I'd like to remove 1/2" along the 9" edge and 2.25" along the 4.5" edge. I need to be able to make it close to perfectly square, and to do this repeatably on multiple boards.
Visually, here is what I want to do (not to scale):
Before: xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx
After: xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx
I'm guessing I could do this on a table saw, for this case, since I can raise the blade 1/2" above the table and use a dado head blade. However, what about the more general case, if the smaller dimension of the rectangle that I want to remove was larger than the max height of a tablesaw blade?
Thanks for any suggestions.
-Scott