# The King of Dado Blades



## a1Jim

congrats on a super dado blade set . Thanks for the review.


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## DrBreakIt

Sounds Excellent!


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## Dusty56

Do you make something special that requires the 8" size ? I was going to purchase the 8" but the salesman told me that I would probably never max out the depth of cut that the 6" size gives you. Saved a lot of money by going with the 6" and have yet to exceed its cutting depth limit.


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## roman

how exceptional it must be to cut a goove with dado blades and get little if any tear out…......... ?

and little if any tear out when running a dado blade …....... to make a dado

I hate to tell ya….....................there should be ZERO tear out in a dado or a groove to get 5 stars. No chips for 5 stars.


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## ericandcandi

I have to agree with roman, 5 stars should equal ZERO tear-out. Great review though. I have heard nothing but great talk about that set. Im saving my pennies as we speak for this same one.


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## GaryK

Sounds like you are a happy camper. If I used a dado a lot more than I do I would probably get one also. As it is I use my Freud 508 about once or twice a year. It works great for me.


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## ND2ELK

I have this dado set and would not have any other. I especially like the extra plywood chipper that comes with the set to cut the under size plywood we get now a days. No shims are needed for the standard sizes.

God Bless
tom


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## sbryan55

This is a nice review, Bunkie. I bought the 8" version several years ago and it has performed flawlessly. The dadoes are flat bottomed and it plows them out effortlessly.


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## richgreer

Thanks for the review. I also suffered with a low quality dado set for years and I also love my thin kerf Woodworker II saw blade. I probably went through the same decision making process you did but I ended up with the Freud SD606, the 6 inch version of their dial-a-width dado set. I am very pleased with it. It's great to get true flat bottoms and no tear out (have not tried it on plywood yet). The convenience of the dial-a-width is great - no shims. I don't mean to imply that my dado is better than the Dado King. I believe they are both excellent dado sets and vastly superior to the poor quality set that I used to use.


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## JasonWagner

Well, it is plywood and you don't know how well that top layer was glued in that particular spot that you got some tear out. That's like being worried that your fence face is out by 0.001". Thank you for the review. I had a Freud set but sold it with my Ridgid contractor saw. I'm thinking about getting the same one for my new saw just because the difference between the dado I had and "perfect" isn't worth 3x the price for me. I'd love to have the Forrest stack, but have treated myself to WWIIs instead. By the way, I have the Wixey angle gauge and a 1023SLWX and I set the stops out as far as I could. I'll always check the angle so why have it be 44.8 one time and require me to get wrenches out. So mine goes from <0>45 degrees.


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## knapke411

I have the same set and have had great success with plywood and little to no tear out depending on what the last substrate is (it really annoys me that commercial sheet wood dealers are now using MDF as the final layer). Then I made a bunch of zero clearance inserts and that ended any tear out problems I had. Of courses some blue tape will eliminate it too.


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## bunkie

Roman,

I can only say that, first, I was not using a zero-clearance insert and there was a good 1/4" gap between the blade and the insert. Second, as I mentioned, the plywood used for the test has an incredibly thin face veneer, less than 1/32" thick. I'm not sure how good the glue is as many have complained of delaminating. Finally, the tearout in question is really small, less than 1/16" of an inch in length at its largest and there was very little of it overall. I fully expect that there will be no tearout whatsoever once I make a zero-clearance insert. I will, of course, update this thread with my results once I do.


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## bunkie

Richgreer,

I considered the Freud dial-a-width, but I was going by personal experience. My Forrest WWII ended up being very inexpensive over the long run while the $100 Freud turned out to be an expensive mistake considering how little use I got out of it.


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## rjcshop

Thanks for the review - I put the Forrest set on my wish list for Christmas since I too loved the Woodworker II. Happily Santa, aka my wife, got it for me - so I'm putting it in the saw tomorrow to finish a project. It's all solid oak, so tear out shouldn't be an issue, but flat bottoms, especially when making Tenons is a big thing - so I'm looking forward to a great day in the shop. What better way is there to spend the last day of the year …


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## mattg

Yeah, I have similar results from my 6" Dado King. I love mine!!


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## BigG

Agree, I'm on my third dado set now and will soon bust the bank for the 6" Forrest to go with my other WWII blades. If I would have popped for this in the first place I would be money ahead….......


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## bunkie

Dusty,

I really have no answer to the 6"/8" question at present. I'm sure that the 6" would probably have been good enough, but it was the 8" model on sale and I just couldn't resist.

I have very few top-shelf tools being a value-proposition sort of guy but those I do have, I cherish. Both my Forrest blades and my Lie-Nielsen bronze #4 plane will, I hope, soon be joined by one of the new Veritas or LN block plane. The Veritas is over $200! It's sort of insane, but I got to try one at the last Woodworking Show and I almost bought it on the spot. It's soooo beautiful!


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## knotscott

Congrats on your new dado bunkie, and thanks writing a great review. I've been pleased with every Forrest blade I've tried so far….I haven't had a chance to spin a Dado King yet, but I have no doubt it's premo set.

My apologies if this comes across as being picky, but I like to keep things real, as it's ultimately more helpful to everyone reading these posts in the long run. I frequently read phrases like "absolutely perfect" and "perfectly flat" in regards to grooves and dados cut from stacked dado sets….no doubt some are better than others, and the very best are really, really good. But nearly all the sets I know of use beveled teeth on the outside cutters to help minimize tearout…in order to be of any benefit, the beveled teeth must protrude slightly above the flat teeth of the inside chippers. The protruding beveled teeth leave tiny grooves at the outside of the cut…a trait often called "bat ears". The better sets tend to stagger some flat teeth in between the beveled teeth to minimize the depth of the bat ears, but they're there. It's minor enough that a lot of people don't even realize it, but it's not realistic when manufacturers or owners claim that these sets leave truly flat bottoms, when indeed they don't. It's likely that there are sets that don't have any beveled teeth on the outside cutters and use all flat top ground teeth, which will leave a flat bottom, but those sets will also exhibit more tearout, especially across the grain that the better sets that use beveled teeth. The other option for truly flat bottoms is from a router bit, but there are other drawbacks to that method as well…never a free lunch!

Here's a pic I copied from Forrest's website that shows the correction orientation of the cutters…it also shows the bat ears left by the beveled teeth:


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## bunkie

Knotscott,

Thanks for your thoughtful and precise response. In my defense, I would have to say that I may have been so giddy at seeing such good results that I tended to overlook the bat ears left by the outside cutters.

The interior of the resulting dado is remarkably flat. I attribute this to a combination of the precision of the chipper teeth and the accuracy of the arbor holes. As I mentioned, this is the only dado I've ever heard that doesn't hum. That hum has to come from some sort of either horizontal oscillation of the blades and chippers, imbalance in the rotating mass or radial movement thereof. Given that flat bottoms are a function of every cutter having the same radial distance from the arbor, I'd guess that the latter is the case, but it's just a guess.


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## ray470

congrats great dado set thanks for the review


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