Making Dadoes on a Miter Saw
George VondriskaDescription
Need to make a dado or two? Not everyone knows this, but you can make dadoes on your miter saw. Yep, on your miter saw. No need to put a dado head on your table saw, or set up a router bit in a hand-held router or on a router table. If your miter saw has the right flip down stop, you can use it to make dadoes.
How it works
If your miter saw has a flip down stop, you can use it to limit how far the blade will penetrate into your material. The combination of the flip stop and, on most saws, a bolt, lets you dial in depth of cut pretty accurately. Of course when the flip stop is out of the way, you can cut full depth.
Cutting full width
When you use the flip stop to limit depth of cut you’ll find that the kerfs or dadoes you cut don’t call all the way to the edge of the board that’s against the fence. This isn’t a big deal, and is easy to overcome. Simply place a spacer against the fence so the board you’re cutting is pushed forward; off the fence. It’ll take a little experimentation to figure out how wide the sacrificial board should be, but a board about 1-½” wide should do it.
Blade choice
The best blade for these cuts would be an FTG; flat top grind. That’ll leave you with a nice flat bottom on the dado. If you don’t have that particular blade, don’t sweat it. You can still make dadoes. You just won’t get a dead flat bottom.
More on miter saws
A miter saw will do lots more than cut dadoes, of course. Want to learn more? We’ve got lots of ways for you to learn how to use a miter saw.
Table saw dadoes
If you’re cutting more than one or two dadoes, you’ll want to use a table saw instead of your miter saw. Cutting dadoes on the table saw is fast and, with the right instruction, easy to do.
Here's something in the category of people ask me this about their miter saw and it's a "what's the deal" kind of a thing. So the "what's the deal" is, "I've got this thing on my miter saw "that I really don't understand what it's all about, "it's a stop kind of a gizmo." On this saw, it's this part right here. So, pay attention to this bolt and right now, the stop component is disabled. So when I come down, that bolt does not bear against anything. That lets me make a through cut. When I flip this down, the bolt kisses and that limits my vertical travel. So what's the deal with that? Well, let me leave that in a down position and show you here what the deal is. We can use that function for making dadoes on your miter saw. And here's how that would look. I've limited the depth by virtue of that bolt. So instead of a through cut, we're only getting a partial cut. And, of course, because it's a threaded bolt, we can dial it down or dial it up to increase or decrease the depth of cut. Now, you're probably looking at that dado and saying, "that ain't gonna work very well." Because the nature of this is that we end up with that upsweep at the end. Very simple solution to that. When you're doing the real deal, you need a little bit of a backer board, then your target board. Let's repeat that process. And with the backer board, we can get a dado that blasts all the way through and is the same level throughout. So it's an interesting thing to know about. I don't use it every day, but if you just need to do a dado or two, that ain't a bad way to do it.
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nice, I did not realize how I could my my miter saw to make a dado like that. Especially if I was going to only make a couple daddos.
Where are all the responses?
Why can't I see Amy of the responses?
Assuming you have a sliding miter saw!
Good night, it is not necessary to sacrifice the wood made of a stop. Just misalign it from the cut!
You don't need a backer board but that is one option. You just need to put your board on the opposite side of your saw. then clear the rest of the slot. It makes safety sense when making the dado near the end as demonstrated to use the backer board. Still could be done with proper care.
Great idea. Wish I'd known about this a long time ago ..lol Thks
It would be nice if I could get past the first 7 words but it then buffers adnauseum every time.
The stop that was used to cut a dado also can be used when cutting legs to fit flush with the out edge of a table, I used this when building a work bench, and can also be used to cut slots to interlock framing, I used this when framing a lumber rack from 2x4s.