Multiple Ts Blades?

[Robert foster]

Has anyone tried to put more than one Ts blades on at the same time to do dados? What could go wrong if one stacked a few of them together?

Bob

[scott spencer]

I've done it once with success, but won't necessarily recommend it. The side clearances are different between regular blades and stacked dados. I used 3 idential 10" rippers for a groove I needed to make really deep....you need to stagger the teeth so they don't touch.

[William Nimmo]

I put 2, 10 inch blades in the 2nd table saw to do dados for 1/4 inch drawer bottoms. Realized they were not identical blades (one a few millimeters larger than the other) so the dados were not flat. switched to the dado blade.

[Michael Weber]

I ask this very question when I was starting with WWing. I tried it but using standard ATB blades ended up with lots of little grooves in the dado bottom from the angled teeth. My recommendation is get a mid priced dado set and a set of the plastic shims from Lee Valley (I think)

[glenn bradley]

There was a test done in a mag where they stacked blades. It worked but looked ugly and quality of cut was very poor. For framing or something that will be out of sight, you could do it, safety-wise. Aesthetically horrible.

[Dave Falkenstein]

It would be next to impossible to tune the width of a dado made with a random bunch of blades. That's why a dado set has blades of different widths and shims. Plus the lousy cuts you get from blades of slightly varying diameters already mentioned above. Use a dado set.

[Rick Christopherson]

Unless both blades have the same tooth-count, the teeth will not mesh from one blade to the other and at least one tooth from each blade will be touching the tooth from the adjacent blade. This risks chipping the carbide.

[Rod Sheridan]

I often used two blades (identical tooth count as Rick suggests) to make tenons in one pass.

I machined a spacer that resulted in a 1/4" wide tenon when used with the two identical blades.

The groove you obtain from stacking two saw blades may not be as flat as you would like, depending upon the tooth pattern, and your saw may not have enough power depending upon the material being cut, depth of cut and feed rate.

[Lee Schierer]

I would guess that you could align two identical blades and use them to cut. The cutting speed would likely be pretty slow as there isn't much room for the wood to move into position for the next tooth to take a bite with that many teeth engaged.

It would be just as easy to make two passes with a single blade to get the same result.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Two good saw blades cost more than a dado set. The Harbor Freight $19.99 dado set probably does a better job than some saw blades stacked on the arbor. For less than $100, you can get a Freud SD 208 dado set.