Such a plethora of wonderful advice and customary flames/disagreements.
Rick: I wish I had the space to put 'Bot in...and believe me, I can't wait for the day, because it WILL happen. As always, thank you for your input. (Morris is probably looking for Sterno tablets to fire up a Stirling experiment...*G*)
Bottom line:
As always, you guys are the greatest source of information, bar none.
I almost lost my way when I suggested that I was interested in a low cost alternative. It's a couple-of-hundred smackeroonies. Period. *smacks self*
The Freud Dial-O-Matic appeals to me.So does the CMT pack.. Ridge is not a good deal up here in Kanuckistan as is the Forrest...expensive. Speed, simplicity of small adjustments makes that Dial-O-Job a good choice for me. The materials I am using as 'shelves' varies by 1/32 plus/minus.... but that is usually over a whole sheet.
The flatness of the dado bottom is not as important to me as is the accuracy of the width...but wobblers are too gross. (My ex was a wobbler.. VERY gross. (sorry))
The routerbit solution would probably work just great if I didn't have to make dados smaller than the smallest dado bit.
Again... thank you all so much.
Rob