Dado blades..Legal or Illegal

No laws…no rules…just common sense…keep your fingers out of the way

-- Gary, DeKalb Texas

I don’t know if they are allowed or not; anyway the European table saw are generally lighter then the American ones. This is my metabo (the blade is lowered)

The table is made out of aluminum; the shaft (the arbor) is 20mm; there is the sliding table too, which prevents the possibility to mount a dado blade.

-- Antonio --

Anyway you should be right. I was just noticing that the dado blades are missing in the Italian site of CMT , while they are present in the English one~ ...
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Edited to add:

OOPS, I was wrong! there are in the Italian site too! (“lame per incastri”). I guess they are allowed, but not so common like in US

-- Antonio --

I dont know why, but dado blades are legal here, dado blades are great if you is careful.

-- CJIII Future cabinetmaker

I know they’re not allowed in the Netherlands. Dunno about elsewhere.

I don’t know the answer to your question, but I don’t use them anyway. I had a set and never even tried it before giving it away. For small dados I use the multi pass method and for large or multiple I use a router.

-- Dan-- Info for all @ http://www.hoistman.com

I’v looked in the UK for one but people say they are not legal and they are not available to bye so the fact you cant bye one says they are illegal but that doesn’t mean you can’t make multiple passes with your tablesaw

-- cut it saw it scrap it

Yeap, dado blades are forbidden by law all over the EU on table saws without “permanent guard” (a blade guard that needs the usage of a tool to remove it)...

As you know, the EU safety regulations are more strict and changing very frequently mainly, because the “Unions” are demanding it from the governments…they want the workers to come to work in one piece and come back home in one piece and they don’t care how much it will cost the “Boss” to supply safe machines or how much time is lost because of those safety procedures…

The story starts somewhere at 2000~2001…till then a dado blade was permitted while using an overhead blade guard (“the blade guard must be installed for any operation on the table saw”)...

After accident survey, it was discovered that many “Contact with the blade” happened during the long blade run-down time…so, a new regulation was born “The blade must stop within 10 seconds”...

But stopping the blade so fast created another problem…naturally, the dado blade mass is greater than a 10” blade and the inertia forces (deceleration) involved could cause the opening of the blade Arbor nut so…

No dado blade…most of the new generation table saws are also made with short arbor that will not accommodate dado blade..

On my TS the blade stops in 6 seconds and I’m very happy with this feature…

PS – Pommy, you can buy dado blade in UK it’s just illegal to use it on a table saw with a motor brake…
http://www.rutlands.co.uk/cgi-bin/psProdSrch.cgi/@cSaw%20Blades%20-%20Dado@b::0::user::1,0,0,1::

Regards
niki

hey Niki, do you know what? we have already met on the Italian site “il-legno”, some years ago…how are you?

-- Antonio --

I would hate to give up dado blades.

-- Still clinging to my guns and religion.

antmjr your workshop looks realy used….. now we need some from different angles. ;-)

Thanks all

niki you beut…

So just because of the enertia of the blades giving them more time to spin caused more accidents?
I wonder if the survey found how many people get cut by a single blade…That should be high too.
Then All the people in europe will have no saw blade machines to work with. ;-)

Ta !

-- "Even small steps makes a distance." (Shawn Phillips, musician)

Hi Antonio, nice to see you here.

Notottoman
The survey was on table saw accidents in general.
The survey have shown that many accidents occurred while the blade (single blade) was at the run-down stage because people did not have patience till the blade stopped and pushed the fingers to the blade. That’s the reason that they made the “blade must stop within 10 seconds” law…without any connection to dado blade…

After the motor brake was installed, they discovered that because of the so high deceleration rate, the arbor nut can open if the blade is greater than 10” in diameter (i.e. the blade weight)...the dado blade weight is greater than a 10” blade and can cause the opening of the Arbor nut, so “no dado blade”.

I don’t have the numbers of the accidents in EU but for USA, it’s 60,000 table saw accidents a year…if to believe to Steve (sawstop)...

Regards
niki

niki
you are one of the most informative people on Lj….That I know of.. very knowlegable in these things.
I’ve read alot of your posts….

So .. Does the dado blade climb off the arbor and attact all in the workshop? Or does it just cause damage to the machines?
Also that would be close to .2% of the population of the US.
What % would that be to woodworkers of single blade accidents?

-- "Even small steps makes a distance." (Shawn Phillips, musician)