I am building a dresser that has drawer boxes made out of 1/2 oak plywood sides, and 1/4″ oak plywood bottoms. My table saw is a Craftsman contractor saw and installing the dado blade requires that I remove half of the lower shroud ( due to interference) as well as the guard and splitter. This is a royal pain.
My router is all set up for doing dovetails as I complete the pieces for the drawers and changing that setup is a royal pain as well. I’m not building this from any formal plans, so I have to do things as I go along.
Okay, you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all of this.
I don’t know if this is the safest thing to do but it worked for me. Instead of going through the hassle with my dado or router to mill groves for the drawer bottoms, I simply put two blades on my saw instead of one and milled the grooves that way. I don’t think I would ever do anything wider than that in this way. I staggard the teeth and had very clean results.
I read all of the woodworking mags and have never heard of this technique before. Have any of you done this or am I a trailblazer or a complete moron?
Thanks for any input.
Replies
Neither a trailblazer or a moron.
What you did has been done before. It's a fair solution. A better solution is a second router, or tweaking your work flow so you're not in a bind with the router set up for dovetailing when you need to mill dadoes and grooves.
Owning two routers in a mechanized shop is not an unreasonable extravagance.
I do it all the time to make drawer stock. I use inexpensive 24 tooth blades to insrease the chip removal.
Mike
Thanks for the info. I'm glad to hear that others have done this as well. It really works great. I wasn't sure if there was a safety aspect that I was missing.
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