Showerthought: why does nobody check their dado stack runout before assembly?

I was at a shop in Minneapolis last month helping a guy with some shelving and noticed his dado cuts were all slightly off. He blamed the wood movement but I checked his setup and the stack had about 0.008 inches of wobble. He had been fighting this for 6 months on every project. Three minutes with a dial indicator and a little shim fixed it. Has anyone else run into this where people assume the tool is fine but never actually measure the play?

3 comments

3 Comments

reeselewis17d ago

Wait, do you really think most people are skipping this step on purpose? I mean yeah it’s wild that someone would just assume a dado stack is dead perfect out of the box but most folks I know just don’t have a dial indicator laying around or know how to use one. I’ve been in plenty of shops where guys just throw the stack on and start cutting, and honestly it works fine like 9 times out of 10. So maybe the real issue isn’t that nobody checks, it’s that nobody thinks they need to until something goes wrong. You’re totally right that it’s a simple fix, but let’s be real here most hobbyists aren’t running a precision setup.

veraw4717d ago

Tbh "works fine 9 times out of 10" is the problem right there.

jade22612d ago

Yeah but 9 times out of 10 isn't really a fix, that's just luck.