Anyone have Hammer (Felder) dado set?

[Brian Cosgrove]

Hi. I am trying to determine if the Hammer dado set ($729) is worth the cost in comparison to the Forrest Dado King? I plan to use the dado set for dado's in plywood (various types) and box joints for drawers. My understanding is that the Dado King will do an excellent job, but will leave minor "bat ears," which are not very desirable in box joints. I have heard that the Hammer dado set will produce flat bottoms, but causes tear-out in plywood. I have thought about getting the Dado King for plywood dado's and doing box joints on the router table, however, just bought a Hammer K3 slider and would like to use it for things like box joints. If anyone out there has the Hammer dado set, please help me with your opinions and observations. I also considered getting two sets of Dado Kings and getting one of them ground differently for use on solid stock to eliminate bat ears for the box joints.

Thanks, Brian

[Van Huskey]

Why not get the Forrest Dado King and the finger joint set? My only concern is if they make a FJ set for the Felder.

[Brian Cosgrove]

Van, Thanks for the advice. On Forrest's site, they do show a custom bore available for the finger joint set. I will have to call them and verify. If that is the case, I will likely go that route and purchase the Dado King and the finger joint set.

Brian

[Darren Brown]

Brian,

I just took delivery of my K3 on January 21. I bought the Forrest Dado King 6 inch. When I installed the Dado King on my Hammer and made my first cut, I was disappointed. There were noticeable steps in the dado. I called Forrest and they are going to send me a call tag to return my dado set to them so they can check it out. Either the set was not bored to 30mm properly or the teeth on the chippers were not ground properly. I'm sure they will make it right but for $320 I expected it to be a "flat bottomed dado" as claimed in the add copy. At half the price of the Felder set, I'm willing to go through a little grief to make it perfect.

Darren

[Brian Cosgrove]

Darren, please keep me posted on your results once you get the issue resolved.

Brian

[Darren Brown]

Brian,

Will do. Also, not real pleased with the included Hammer combination blade. It left some swirl marks on the cut edge. It isn't anything major, but not the glassy smoothness I was able to achieve with my Unisaw and a Forrest WWII. If anyone has any recommendations of blades for a Hammer K3, I'm all ears.

Darren

[Stephen Cherry]

I'd also post this at the felder owners group site on yahoo. Lots of collective knowledge.

[Jay Brewer]

Brian,

Will do. Also, not real pleased with the included Hammer combination blade. It left some swirl marks on the cut edge. It isn't anything major, but not the glassy smoothness I was able to achieve with my Unisaw and a Forrest WWII. If anyone has any recommendations of blades for a Hammer K3, I'm all ears.

Darren

The Hammer blades are not the best quality. I had Forrest re bore my WWII's and Freud blades I had left over from the cabinet saw. I also have some of the Felder blades and they are better quality that the Hammer.

Felder has a 48 tooth, 250mm chromed blade that was on sale during the holidays for $91. It is a good all purpose blade like the WWII.

Hope this helps.

[Rod Sheridan]

Brian,

Will do. Also, not real pleased with the included Hammer combination blade. It left some swirl marks on the cut edge. It isn't anything major, but not the glassy smoothness I was able to achieve with my Unisaw and a Forrest WWII. If anyone has any recommendations of blades for a Hammer K3, I'm all ears.

Darren

Hi Darren, I'm using FS Tools blades on my B3, couldn't be happier...........Regards, Rod.

[Rod Sheridan]

Brian,

I just took delivery of my K3 on January 21. I bought the Forrest Dado King 6 inch. When I installed the Dado King on my Hammer and made my first cut, I was disappointed. There were noticeable steps in the dado. I called Forrest and they are going to send me a call tag to return my dado set to them so they can check it out. Either the set was not bored to 30mm properly or the teeth on the chippers were not ground properly. I'm sure they will make it right but for $320 I expected it to be a "flat bottomed dado" as claimed in the add copy. At half the price of the Felder set, I'm willing to go through a little grief to make it perfect.


Darren

I purchased the FS Tools 6 inch dado and had it bored to fit the Hammer B3, it cuts perfectly smooth grooves.

It was just under $300 Canadian.

regards, Rod.

[Jeff Monson]

Darren, I went through the same thought process a few months ago, I ended up buying the Forrest dado king for my KF700.
I couldnt be happier with the cut, perfect flat bottoms, no tearout on sheetgoods. I have not done any finger joints so I cannot comment on that.

I use a Felder 250mm combination blade on my saw and have been very happy with it. I plan on ordering a 300mm rip blade in the near future.

[scott spencer]

Brian - All of the better stacked dado sets that I know of use a top bevel grind on their outside cutters. In order to be effective at reducing tearout, they must protrude slightly higher than the flat raker teeth used on the inside chippers, which in turn is what produces the bat ears. Some of the best sets alternate flat raker teeth between the top beveled teeth to help reduce the effects of the bat ears, but they're still they're to some degree...even though many of the top manufacturer's claim "perfectly flat bottoms" from their dado sets...it's simply not completely true.

There's always going to be a performance trade off....no free lunch. The sets with top beveled teeth that leave slight bat ears tend to have less tear out. Without those beveled teeth, tear out increases, so if you have one of those sets reground to eliminate the bat ears, tear out will increase. There are other parameters that are significant factors in tearout (like hook angle), and tear out can be decreased by using a backer board. The box joint sets tend to use flat top teeth and a very low or negative hook angle, but since box joints tend to be rip cuts that go with the grain, there's inherently less tear out. Tear out would likely increase on a crosscut groove cut by a box joint type set.

As an example of bat ears, this is from Forrest's website that shows the correct orientation of the outside cutters:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/hewood/sawparts/Saw%20Blades/outblades.gif

[Darren Brown]

Hi all,

First let me just apologize to Brian for hijacking your thread. Thank all the rest of you for chiming in. I'm sure many of us who jump into the world of European machines find ourselves a bit lost in the woods. Unless you buy from the manufacturer, tooling can be a bit of a crap shoot. Don't even get me started on the instructions. I bought a Hammer crosscut blade with my K3 because it was convenient, I got a discount, and I was sure it would work with my machine. The quality of cut of the Hammer crosscut blade leaves much to be desired. As time goes buy, I'm sure I'll be replacing those blades but I least I have some to play with.....I mean use for now. Bottom line is at the end of the day, I'm using these new blades on my new sliding table saw. HEH, HEH, HEH. So what if I had to keep an path through my yard free of 75 inches of snow to get it in my basement!

Best,

Darren

[Joe Jensen]

I used a Forrest 8" dado set on a PM66 for about 15 years. I recently upgraded to a Felder KF700SP and I bought the Felder dado set with it. If you haven't seen one, it's very different than normal stacked dado sets. My Felder set is two sets of plates. Each set of plates has a right and a left. Each plate has it's side cutters and also chippers. You adjust the width of cut with shims between the plates. The first set of plates goes from (I think) 6mm-14mm and the second from 12mm-20mm. I'm not sure about exact ranges. The plates have 4 sides replaceable index carbide cutters on them. So sharpening is a matter of rotating the carbide, and after 4 rotations replacement. If the life of the carbide inserts on my Byrd head are any indication, I may never have to buy new inserts. I researched replaceable insert shapre tooling when I bought the new tool and apparently the replaceable inserts use a different grade of carbide that wears longer. Supposedly this grade of carbide breaks down if soldered so it can't be used on normal tooling.

Is the Felder cut enough better than the Forrest to cost double? Probably not, is it really really nice, yes...joe

[Brad Shipton]

Brian, I have the Hammer Dado head, and it was a great purchase. The hammer dado head is just a shaper cutter mounted vertically. Don't start thinking you can just buy any shaper cutter though. It comes with a custom bolting cup and the pin holes are not common. I priced out a custom cutter before from Garniga, and by the time it was all done it cost the same.

I have used mine with a lot of hardwood materials, and it works better than the NA dado's I used in the past. I have found the scribers do a great job to reduce tearout and the flat cutter does a nice job. I have used it a little on plywood sheet goods, and I am not convinced that it does quite as good of a job there. I have found it works very well on melamine.

Other than the Hammer Dado cutter, I don't recommend any Felder cutters. Keep in mind that they dont' build any of their cutters. All their cutters (and a lot of other stuff) are just re-branded parts from others.

Brad

[david blakelock]

This is a very timely question as I just received my new Hammer K3 saw and I am in the process of setting it up. I have been meaning to post pictures, but just haven't had the time. I talked to Carl at Felder and he suggested the Forrest dado set for the Hammer. I was about to buy it until this thread started. Now I think I will wait and see what develops here. The Felder dado set is very interesting and it might be worth the extra money, but boy it is not cheap.

Thanks for starting this thread and letting me jump in.

[Rod Sheridan]

Thanks for the comments Brad, very informative.

One of the considerations that steered me towards the purchase of the FS Tools dado set was that the minimum width for the Hammer unit was 8mm.

The FS Tools set goes from 1/4" (6.35mm) to 13/16" (20.6mm).

The Hammer set is far too big for grooves for 1/4" plywood.

regards, Rod.

[Carl Knapp]

Hi Guys,
My 2 cents on determining blade cut quality.
1. Make sure the first thing you check is the free cut from the heal of the blade to the rip fence against the set up specs. it's usually around .004
2. Make sure to check the free cut on the sliding to the blade body with the set up specs. It is usually around .003 along the blade body. Since almost no one has a set up plate to mount on the arbor, be sure to spin the blade checking run out that will affect you readings.

If you are crabbing through the cut ,you will get heal marks, chip out or even burning.

[Stephen Cherry]

I've got the forrest dado king for my felder K975-- works great. That said, if I were going to get a high dollar insert cutterhead I would consider 1 1/4" for shaper use. The trick would be getting it to work on a saw that has the pins.

[Darren Brown]

Carl,

After reading your post I was concerned I had tweaked the sliding table while moving my saw. Me, my 9 year old son, my 11 year old daughter, an underrated shop crane and a trailer make for an ......... exciting rigging experience. As you can see from the photo below, the slider is exactly on spec! It just gives me the warm fuzzies.

180931

[Carl Knapp]

Darren,
Nice right on the money! It takes a lot to move the slider if it is fastened correctly. I get more concerned with putting stress on the bearing system or upper extrusion. If I have no choice but to use the slider to make a small adjustment, I grab the lower extrusion. I would never pick up the machine weight by the slider.
I see you were using the Magnetic base with the dial gauge. Years ago Mark in service turned me on the oneway multi gauge. It is a must to have I love it for all around measuring.

[Ben Abate]

I have both Felder Dado sets and both of them work fantastic. I've never had a dado set work so well. That said, this was just brought up on FOG (Felder Owners Group) a week or two ago. I believe the concensus is that the dados work fine and most guys agree with my opinion. But, the fellows that liked the dados all owned KF 700 machines or bigger. The fellows with the Hammer machines had mixed results....Some fellows don't like the side cutters, that's easily remedied by softening the points on the side cutters. The main cutters will do just fine. But others we're not at all satisfied but then again some guys had problems with any of the after market dados......I believe it was mentioned that the size of the dado might be what the problems were. I believe John Renzetti mentioned that guys are having great results with a 6 inch dado on the Hammer rather than the 8 inch..........As some one mentioned you might want to go on the FOG forum and ask once again. Good bunch of guys with a lot of knowledge...

Ben

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Ben, the Hammer machines have a maximum dado size of 180mm, an 8 inch dado blade is too large.

As I posted previously I have the FS Tools 6 inch set, flawless cuts.........Regards, Rod.

[Ben Abate]

Rod,
I did not know that they had a limit of a 6 inch dado.....Even though I own a few felder machines I haven't kept up on the Hammer machines. When I purchased mine in 04 Hammer was not around then. I do read the FOG each day and that's how I know of them. Are the FS Tools as expensive as the Felder setup?

Do you belong to the FOG? The reason I ask is I'm sure the fellows over there would like to here from a fellow owner that is having great results. This question about dados for the Hammer is ofter asked. On my model the dado heads are 220 mm, there pretty big......

Thanks for the info Rod.

take care
Ben