"toller" wrote in
:

I bought a Freud S208 on eBay for $74.

I used it last week to cut some 3/4" dados in butternut. It was
perfect.

Today I did some 5/16" in red oak. The bottom was uneven (I used the
1/16" cutter, last week I didn't; maybe it cuts high?) and there was
serious tearout on the ends.

It may have been the red oak. It's not the most tool friendly of woods,
and is much more prone to tear out than butternut, or similarly, walnut.

If you have a scrap of that butternut around, try the same setup on that.

There's always the router method. Or you could neander the dado...

Patriarch