Setting Up Dado Blades to Make a Box Joint Jig

Video Transcript

"I've got my handy dandy little space goggles here and before I start setting up this stack I'm going to take my little wire brush, making sure the saw is unplugged and I have it unplugged see and you go down inside here and scrub off the shaft real good to make sure that I don't have any junk and it has to be nice and clean so these blades will all set together nice and flat. So once that is cleaned off I'm going to go over my blades too. Clean any junk off that one and I'm going to set this 1/8 of an inch blade in and don't forget your back washer, you first have to put this back washer in. I'll put this blade on and then we're going to put a 1/8 inch thick chipper, clean this up a little bit and now we set this chipper in. First of all make sure it is going in the right direction, set it up flat against the blade, this tooth has to land right in this little teeth and that's called a gullet and this is going to allow the wood chips that we cut, it gives them some place to go so that they don't get all jammed up in our dado so I am going to set that one nice and flat and then turn the blade, holding it in place, turn the blade a full revolution and make sure that the other chipper is in the same place on the other side of the blade and in this case that one is so I am going to set that one like this and I'm going to turn the blade 90 degrees and put the second chipper in the same way I put that one in but at a 90 degree angle to the first chipper. You don't want to put these chippers in so they're too close together because it makes an uneven cut in the end and then when the blade comes around it tends to take too big of a bite so we want to keep these spaced so as your blade turns it takes a little nibble off, the next chipper comes around and takes a little nibble and you get a little cleaner cut. Again I'm going to set this up so the tooth is right in that space and make sure that is nice and flat and then I'll come back with our outside blade which is also 1/8 of an inch, clean off the edges a little bit and set that blade and be a little bit careful with it so you don't disturb the position of the chippers and we'll set that one in again so that the tooth of the chipper is in this slot, in the gullet to let the wood out, push them nice and flat together, put on your outside washer, make sure the outside washer is clean around this edge and I'm slip it down there and this is a little bit tricky to get your fingers down in there but do it and then we'll put the outside nut on and we'll be ready to start doing some test cuts."