On Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:38:40 -0500, "Leon"
wrote:

If I were to do it again, I'd go with the Freud stacked dado set that uses a
"detent dial" on the outer blade to fine tune the width of of the dado with
out using shims.

Based on the glowing recommendations in this thread, I sprung for one
of the Freud SD600 "Dial-a-Width" dado sets (20% off from Rockler).
Tried it out today. It cuts a beautiful dado and width adjustments
are a breeze.

Ran into a little problem taking it off the arbor after the first use.
When I installed it, tightening down the arbor nut pushed all the
blades together like they should be. Don't know if my TS arbor is
slightly oversized or the arbor holes in the chippers are slightly
undersized, but I thought I was going to have to use a gear puller to
get that last chipper off the arbor. Finally worked it loose with
judicious use of thin wedges and a dead blow hammer. No problem
removing the outer blades and chippers, the ones that ride the arbor
threads, but that last chipper that rides on the non-threaded part of
the arbor acted like it was held on by an interference fit.

Could have been paint inside the arbor hole. After cleaning out the
holes in the chippers to bright metal, and using a loop of sandpaper
to polish the arbor - real precision metalworking - the chippers slide
on and off without insurmountable difficulty. The outer blades didn't
present any problem at all.

So my advice to anyone who gets one of these (or any stacked dado set,
for that matter) is to mount each blade and chipper singly and
individually before you mount the stack. Make sure the blades/chippers
will slide all the way to the inner flange without interference. Might
save you some problems getting them off after the arbor nut forces too
small a hole over too large an arbor.

My other dado set mounted and dismounted without any problem at all.
With it, the problem was those durn shims catching in the arbor
threads. At least I won't have to deal with that aggravation anymore.


Tom Veatch
Wichita, KS
USA