Recess in Pinkwood[formerly called redwood]

Chisel and mallet

Maybe predrill most of the waste out, then finish with the chisel and mallet. But I do it with a router, then the chisel to square it up.

Agreed that's the best way to do it, but. . . OP wants to do it the hard way. LOL! ;)

No, the hard way is to train 1000+ generations of mutant dwarf beavers to gnaw out precise 5 X 5 X 3/4 recesses on demand.

Actually the hard way would be to resaw the 2 x 6, notch the 3/4" piece on the table saw, then glue it back together. If the wood loss to the resaw ke rf is essential to the finished product, then it gets even harder. ;-)

Would a domino help? Actually, if one had one handy and went about the task thoughtfully, they could do all but the cleanup with the domino.

Actually you could use a dado on a tablesaw or RAS, you have to set up a stop and move the fence a bunch, the length of a 2x6 needs support. In the end you still need to cleanup with a chisel.

They could but it would be rather time consuming. 5x5 inches is 127 x

You may be thinking of using it like a router--it doesn't do that--the cutters cut primarily on the end, the edge-cutting zone is very shallow--you _might_ get away with routing a half a millimeter or so deep, but I wouldn't unless the stakes were really, really high--why risk busting a very expensive specialized tool when Harbor Fright will sell you a usable if not necessarily durable router for less than the price of the Festool _cutter_.

Three sided, cut from an edge? I missed that "cut in from one edge" detail the first time.

You _could_ do this with any of the "multifunction tools" that are more or less clones of the Fein Multimaster.

With the right blade you should be able to make your cut in three passes--you can get blades that will cut two inches deep, so you could go around the perimeter, then go across a little under 2 inches from the end, then come in from the end and cut out one block, then again for a second two inch block, then the last inch.

How clean it would be depends on how careful you are--if it has to be absolutely precise then cut a little undersize and finish with a chisel.

I was not being serious, but rather carrying on with the Rube Goldberg approaches to the "problem" posed by the OP and the solutions put forth by other members of this esteemed collection of wood butchers.

We could always enlist the aid of a good geneticist or entomologist who could get us a strain of termites who would march and gnaw in lock step with a tiny super accurate GPS unit strapped to the thorax of their leader. ;)

Suffice it to say the best way (IMO) to accomplish this task is with a router and chisel for cleanup, followed, in second place, the chisel and mallet as has been done for ages.

The Domino solution is just one of those "think outside the box" or "work with what you have" solutions. I don't have a domino, but I do have a P-C Biscuit cutter. I found, thinking outside the box, that it was the be all, end all for undercutting door jambs when I refloored the house. Worked out amazingly well in my case. Had I needed it to cut the jambs a bit higher, a little shimming would have rendered a cut line that was dead nuts on. I saved a ton of time and money on the job doing it that way. Nowhere have I seen P-C recommend that as a use for the tool, but it was ideal.

Markem on Sat, 15 Sep 2018 21:25:36 -0500 typed in rec.woodworking the following:

Use an X-acto knife. Leaves a cleaner finish, too.

pyotr filipivich wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

You just have to really watch for its tendency to wander. It'll find the grain and go whatever way it wants.

X-actos wander even on relatively grain free surfaces like sheet styrene. Good technique helps, as does a good straight edge.

Puckdropper