Back in the mid 90s, I bought my first dado set - the Freud SD306 Safety Dado set. IIRC, I paid around $125 at the time, on sale. I've used it occasionally throughout the years and have always been pleased with the performance. My only complaint was the little bat-ear corners where the outer cutters cut a little deeper to prevent splintering and tear-out - on visible edges these were a little annoying.
I recently needed to upgrade to an 8" dado and purchased the Delta 7670 / Dewalt H7200 from Grizzly, for ~$100, shipped. Given that it cost considerably less, especially when counting inflation, I was eager to see how it performed. I mounted it last night, made a few test cuts and took some pictures. In short, I'm quite satisfied and even a little impressed.
First, here is a picture of the blade mounted in my saw and the cut-off fence I'm using for the testing. Note that I tested with a backerboard for the cuts. Testing without the backer would have been a more challenging test. But since I always use a backer if the cut will be visible, I wanted to evaluate how it will perform for me in normal use. I have the two outside blades and four 1/8" chippers mounted.
Here is a closeup of the exit side of a dado in red oak veneer plywood (appears to be tulip base plies, aka yellow poplar). There is almost no tear-out in the veneer. In addition, the bat-ears are noticeably smaller than those from my previous dado set (I can't do side-by-side testing because my previous 6" dado will not work in my current saw). There is a slight fuzz along the cut edge and you can see one 1/4" splinter hanging down - it was a very thin splinter. This cut was across the veneer grain.
I also cut with the grain, which resulted in a perfect edge. The cuts crossed each other, allowing me to examine the bat-ear edges more closely:
Here is a cross-cut in red oak:
And finally, a cut in construction-grade plywood. The picture is a little blurry, but there was nearly zero tear-out:
All in all, I'm VERY impressed with the cut quality. I put a caliper on the resulting cuts and found it to be right at 0.75 +/- 0.005".
While I had the caliper out, I put it on the blades, chippers and shims. I found all of them to be right on, +/- 0.0005" except for the 0.010" shims, which were consistently 0.012-0.013". I used 2 separate calipers to verify that finding, one digital and one analog. I plan to inquire with Delta about this inaccuracy.
This set includes:
The case that comes with this set is exceptional. Because a dado set is something I use occasionally, expect to own for a very long time and is a bit fragile, I really appreciated the case that came with my Freud set. This one is even better. The chippers store in the top half of the case. The chippers can be offset so that the teeth do not touch and damage each other and a wing nut holds them in place. The outer blades have a place in the lower half of the case. There is a plastic spacer included to keep the teeth apart and they are also held in place with a plastic wing nut. The shims also have dedicated spaces in the case to keep them in place - one for each of the three sizes. In addition, the lugs in the cover that keep the shims in place when closed make a convenient place to put the chippers if you need to put some aside in order to reach chippers that are down lower in the stack, as shown here:
In summary, this is an excellent dado set that produces a very high quality cut at a very affordable price. The fantastic storage case helps to ensure that I'll be using this set for a long time.
Chris
I recently needed to upgrade to an 8" dado and purchased the Delta 7670 / Dewalt H7200 from Grizzly, for ~$100, shipped. Given that it cost considerably less, especially when counting inflation, I was eager to see how it performed. I mounted it last night, made a few test cuts and took some pictures. In short, I'm quite satisfied and even a little impressed.
First, here is a picture of the blade mounted in my saw and the cut-off fence I'm using for the testing. Note that I tested with a backerboard for the cuts. Testing without the backer would have been a more challenging test. But since I always use a backer if the cut will be visible, I wanted to evaluate how it will perform for me in normal use. I have the two outside blades and four 1/8" chippers mounted.
Here is a closeup of the exit side of a dado in red oak veneer plywood (appears to be tulip base plies, aka yellow poplar). There is almost no tear-out in the veneer. In addition, the bat-ears are noticeably smaller than those from my previous dado set (I can't do side-by-side testing because my previous 6" dado will not work in my current saw). There is a slight fuzz along the cut edge and you can see one 1/4" splinter hanging down - it was a very thin splinter. This cut was across the veneer grain.
I also cut with the grain, which resulted in a perfect edge. The cuts crossed each other, allowing me to examine the bat-ear edges more closely:
Here is a cross-cut in red oak:
And finally, a cut in construction-grade plywood. The picture is a little blurry, but there was nearly zero tear-out:
All in all, I'm VERY impressed with the cut quality. I put a caliper on the resulting cuts and found it to be right at 0.75 +/- 0.005".
While I had the caliper out, I put it on the blades, chippers and shims. I found all of them to be right on, +/- 0.0005" except for the 0.010" shims, which were consistently 0.012-0.013". I used 2 separate calipers to verify that finding, one digital and one analog. I plan to inquire with Delta about this inaccuracy.
This set includes:
- two 24-tooth outside blades
- six 4-tooth chippers: four 1/8", one 1/16" and one 3/32"
- 12 shims: four 0.005", four 0.010" and four 0.020"
The case that comes with this set is exceptional. Because a dado set is something I use occasionally, expect to own for a very long time and is a bit fragile, I really appreciated the case that came with my Freud set. This one is even better. The chippers store in the top half of the case. The chippers can be offset so that the teeth do not touch and damage each other and a wing nut holds them in place. The outer blades have a place in the lower half of the case. There is a plastic spacer included to keep the teeth apart and they are also held in place with a plastic wing nut. The shims also have dedicated spaces in the case to keep them in place - one for each of the three sizes. In addition, the lugs in the cover that keep the shims in place when closed make a convenient place to put the chippers if you need to put some aside in order to reach chippers that are down lower in the stack, as shown here:
In summary, this is an excellent dado set that produces a very high quality cut at a very affordable price. The fantastic storage case helps to ensure that I'll be using this set for a long time.
Chris
