Festool rail blind dado setup

[Brian Holcombe]

Thought I'd share this setup I made for my festool guide rails to make an easy and repeatable setup for blind dados. These can be a real pain to setup by measuring and attempting to repeat the measurement (even with knife lines). This setup bolts to the guide rail underneath, the length is set using the sliding stops. The hook on the edge of the board so that the whole thing doesn't tip over. The festool clamps keep the whole thing in place.


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I also made the stops, they simply slide along the guide rails and lock into place.


When this whole getup is moved from one board to another it repeats using the far edge of the board as a reference, so long as the reference is accurate from board to board it can make a mirror image.


It helped tremendously for making these bookcases which feature simple joinery of blind mortise and tenon.


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[Jim Becker]

Very, very nice way to handle this! Perhaps you can share some closer photos of how the jig engages with both the rail and the workpiece?

[Brian Holcombe]

Thanks Jim, it's a simple setup, just using one of those t-slot connectors. I'll take a photo next time I set it up since it may be hard to understand out of context.

[Bill Adamsen]

Very nifty Brian. I too would love to see how it works. The size of the tenon makes it look like there should be template for the router and I can't envision how you are hogging out the waste.

[Brian Holcombe]

Thanks Bill, that one shown used a 3/4" bit. The remainder of the work was done with a 3/8" bit. I set the stops to cut the dado (full width, 1/4" depth) then moved them to points along the path to create the 1" deep mortises. I would just reset my depth gauge whenever I changed boards.

[Van Huskey]

That is really neat, and I THINK I get it. Did you use the LR32 holes as a reference for the mortises?

[Brian Holcombe]

Thank you! Not in this case, but that’s a good idea