3/4 oak ply

[Ray Turney]

Just bought a sheet of 3/4 oak ply to build a set of shelves for my wife's cook books. Just a few questions. I have a Freud 80 tooth crosscut blade and a Freud 40 tooth ripping blade, which to use? Also would like to dado for the shelves, tablesaw or router? Will I have tearout with a router? I've worked with just regular ply before but not oak and at 40 bucks a sheet just thought I'd check in here first and make sure I don't mess it up. Thanks fellas Ray Turney

[Jim Becker]

Of those two blades, use the cross-cut blade. To avoid tear-out when using the router to do dados, grooves and rabbits, score the edge of the cut with a utility knife first.

[glenn bradley]

Jim is right-on with the blade and the scoring technique. This simple pre-step I sometimes skip for unknown reasons (inherent laziness?). The results with the scoring step yield much cleaner results.