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Scott Kuhn
 
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Default Newbie question: How to make finger joint cut

I have almost no experience with woodworking and am wondering which
tool would be best to make the following cut. (I can make it fairly
well w/ hand tools, but curious what the best approach would be with
power tool).

I have a piece of poplar 1/2" thick, 9" long, 4.5" wide. I want to cut
a rectangle out of the corner of the board to make a finger. I'd like
to remove 1/2" along the 9" edge and 2.25" along the 4.5" edge. I need
to be able to make it close to perfectly square, and to do this
repeatably on multiple boards.

Visually, here is what I want to do (not to scale):

Befo
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After:
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
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I'm guessing I could do this on a table saw, for this case, since I
can raise the blade 1/2" above the table and use a dado head blade.
However, what about the more general case, if the smaller dimension of
the rectangle that I want to remove was larger than the max height of
a tablesaw blade?


Thanks for any suggestions.

-Scott