TIL I was cutting dados all wrong for 5 years

I watched a old timer at a shop in Portland set up his dado stack. Took him like 2 minutes. I always did multiple passes, scrap wood, the whole mess. He just ran the board through once, slow and steady. Felt like an idiot. Anyone else have that moment where you realize you been making a simple job hard?

3 comments

3 Comments

robin5911mo ago

Man, that's the truth. I spent years overcomplicating dados before someone showed me the one pass method too. It's crazy how much time and scrap wood we waste just because nobody taught us the simple trick.

jenny471mo ago

My buddy Mike from my woodworking group had this EXACT same thing happen to him. @robin591, you're right about how much time we waste on stuff like this. Mike spent a whole weekend building a bookshelf and fought with his dado cuts the entire time. Then this older guy at the shop just walked over, adjusted his stack in 30 seconds, and ran the board through once. Mike said it came out perfect and he felt like he'd been living under a rock for 5 years. He still gets annoyed thinking about all that scrap wood he threw away because nobody showed him the simple way.

kelly.charlie1mo ago

My neighbor Dave showed me the one pass method last summer at his garage shop in Denver. I had been doing three or four passes with a shim setup I built myself that never worked right. He just dialed in the stack height with a single test cut on a scrap 2x4 and ran it through. I stood there watching thinking all those years of fighting with shifting boards and chattering cuts were totally unnecessary. It really made me question what other basic stuff I have been making harder than it needs to be.