Just curious . . . .

[lowell holmes]

Do you cut dado joints with a back saw and chisel or with a table saw?

[Warren Mickley]

I use a dado plane

[Mark Rainey]

Have used: scoring a line, chiseling a knife wall, a backsaw & chisel, ; have used scoring a line , then a knife wall with chisel, repeating vertical chisel work supplemented with router plane, ;then bought an HNT Gordon 3/4 dado plane - it works like a dream.

[steven c newman]

have used:
Mitre Box to cut the walls, chisel to remove the waste, #39 3/8" dado plane to clean up

Electric Router, with guide....

Stanley #45 set up as a dado plane, backsaw to score the entry and exits.

tablesaw back when I had a dado blade for the saw. Current tablesaw will not accept dado blades.

[lowell holmes]

I have done all you guys mentioned.

[Jim Koepke]

There has never been a table saw in my shop.

Have used an electric router in the past. They are just to noisy and too easy to mess up.

Now most of my dados are stopped. They are usually cut with a saw, chisels and a router plane.

There are a few dado planes in the shop still waiting for me to have a bit of time to get them working.

jtk

[Doug Dawson]

There has never been a table saw in my shop.

Have used an electric router in the past. They are just to noisy and too easy to mess up.

Now most of my dados are stopped.

I use a Festool OF1400 router, with a Festool (usually the short one) guide rail, for which there are Festool attachments for that router that let you do this very cleanly and precisely. Really fast, safer than a table saw, cleaner results, minimal dust. Really easy to do stopped dados as well, with the assistance of a chisel for the stopped ends.

You could also do this with hand tools, I suppose, but I prefer to choose my battles. :^) After all, this is a neander forum, but most of us have band saws.

[Jim Koepke]

I use a Festool OF1400 router, with a Festool (usually the short one) guide rail, for which there are Festool attachments for that router that let you do this very cleanly and precisely. Really fast, safer than a table saw, cleaner results, minimal dust. Really easy to do stopped dados as well, with the assistance of a chisel for the stopped ends.

You could also do this with hand tools, I suppose, but I prefer to choose my battles. :^) After all, this is a neander forum, but most of us have band saws.

The noise of a router disturbs my ears and a few other senses. With ear protection, it is impossible to hear the music playing.

Using saws, chisels, mallets, planes and other means of cutting a dado by hand are much more relaxing to me than using power tools.

jtk

[James Pallas]

It depends on the task for me. I usually use a backsaw and chisel on smaller work. I sometimes use a 45 for wider dados. If I had a lot to do or many wide dados, like case work, I would probably use a TS and dado blade. I sometimes will clean up hand cut work with a router plane, such as stopped dados. I guess there are many ways to come to the same end.
Jim

[lowell holmes]

That is my opinion as well.
It also may depend on the mood I'm in at the time.

[James Waldron]

How do I dado? Let me count the ways ....

I've used every technique mentioned here at least once at one time or another. These days, I most often work with only a couple of dados in a project and I've settled on using a knife cut, a chisel, and a router plane to finish up. It's a satisfyingly simple technique with no set-up required. With sharp tools, it is quick and extremely accurate - particularly when sized to the mating work-piece.