That one piece of feedback that completely changed my dado setup

I've been building cabinets for about 8 years now, and I always thought my dados were fine. Then last month a guy named Frank from a local shop stopped by my workspace to look at a job I was doing. He watched me cut a few test pieces and just said, 'your shoulders are tearing out because your blade stack is too loose.' I honestly hadn't even checked the stack tension in over a year. He showed me how to really snug it up with the arbor nut and back it off just a hair, and then my test cuts came out super clean. I also started using a sacrificial fence with a zero clearance insert, and the difference is night and day. Has anyone else had a random piece of advice like that completely change a routine step in their process?

1 comments

1 Comment

faithf7720m ago

Totally had that happen with my table saw fence... this old timer told me to wax the rails every month and it changed everything about how consistent my cuts were.