Tried an old school dado stack and got way cleaner joints than my router setup

I always used my router for dadoes because it felt faster, but last week I dusted off a 20 year old Delta dado stack I found at a garage sale. Ran some test cuts on maple ply for a kitchen cabinet project in Marietta, and the grooves came out perfectly flat with zero tearout. I spent like 3 hours resetting my fence and bits before, but this thing just worked on the first pass. Has anyone else gone back to an older tool and gotten better results than their modern gear?

3 comments

3 Comments

henry1501d ago

My garage sale Delta is from the mid 90s and I used to roll my eyes at guys who swore by vintage steel. Thought they were just being nostalgic. But I ran 47 dadoes for a bookcase last weekend with ZERO tearout on the old stack versus constant chipout with my router bits. That first clean pass through a scrap piece of oak plywood actually made me say "oh" out loud. I finally get it now.

lee.cora1d ago

Oh man, that's exactly what happened to me... I dug out my grandpa's old Craftsman dado stack from the 80s and it cuts like butter. My new router setup left these weird little ridges no matter how careful I was with the bits. But that old steel just glides through plywood and the bottoms come out smooth as glass. I spent a whole weekend fighting with my router fence before I finally gave up and grabbed the vintage stuff. It's heavier and louder but man does it do the job right. Sometimes the simple old tools just work better than all this new fancy stuff.

jamesc791d ago

You ever notice how the old stuff was built to last and the new stuff is built to sell, @lee.cora? I bet your grandpa's Craftsman stack has that high carbon steel they used back then, not the cheap alloys they use now. That weight you feel is real quality, and it shows in the cut every time.