Setting Dado Blade Depth to Make a Box Joint Jig

Video Transcript

"Hey, previously, on Mikey's finger jig wood shop, before we started this morning, I cut two blocks off wood out of an oak, a piece of oak. And I like to use oak for this part of the jig because it's very stable and strong wood and it's not quite as soft as the pine we're going to use, or this plywood. Each of these blocks is exactly a half an inch on a side and we're going to need two of them. They don't have to be that long, but I like to cut them that long because it gives me a lot to work with. So we're going to set those aside, and go back to the dado jig and lower this dado down. Take one of these blocks, put it right up against the blade. And lower the blade until the very edge of that outside tooth is flush with the top of this block. And this takes a little adjustment. This is where my handy supersonic terrific x-ray glasses come in because it gives you a chance to really look close. Now as far as the depth goes on this, I like to let the blade be just, oh, a little bit less than the thickness of a fingernail above. And the reason for that is, when I'm cutting this plywood, plywood has layers of hard and soft wood. And when I cut this slot, the dado will tend to tear out some of the softer wood and the bottom of this slot can be a tiny bit uneven. So if I let it be cut, be slightly, just a fingernail deeper than this block, the block will fit up in there and up against a flat surface. And since the block has to be flush to the table, it's not real critical how deep this slot is as long as it's deep enough for this piece of oak here to be flush to the bottom of the jig. So now I've set the blade up at the right depth."