Tenon Dados Too Tight

[Gary Campbell]

Guys...
I ran into this when in Nevis, W. I. When cutting a cabinet with tenon dados, it cuts in climb mill and the dados are too small. I am not sure if this is a result of the dado being cut too small or the tenon being cut too large. I did do a post on the eCabs forum, but they dont seem to have the extended hours as this forum does. Anyone else have a similar experience or fix?
Gary

[dlcw]

I just got done cutting about 200 drawer box parts in 5/8" BB and used blind tenon joinery. All the joints fit perfectly. I didn't look closely at the direction of cut, because I was doing other tasks at the time, I don't know if it was conventional or climb cutting the dados. I'll watch more closely tomorrow and let you know what it does.

Also, the nightstands I posted on here last week were all cut with M&T joinery and every joint was right on the money. One thing I've done is change the size of the dado to 65% of the thickness of the material instead of the default 50%. Since I use a 3/8" compression for outline cuts on 3/4" material this eliminated a bit change between cutting dados and outline cutting. If I would have left the dados at 50% it would require a 1/4" bit to cut the dados because the plywood is actually .714 thick and not .75 thick.

At least I have one piece of this whole puzzle working right for me. :-)

Tomorrow morning I embark on cutting $1800 worth of hickory plywood into cabinet parts. I hope all the puzzle pieces behave. :-)

Don
www.diamondlakewoodworks.com (http://www.diamondlakewoodworks.com)

[knight_toolworks]

a climb cut will make a smaller pocket then a conventional cut. learned this for sure last week (G)

[loriny]

Is there any way to make the dado cuts in conventional direction while still climbing the outline cuts?
Lorin

[Gary Campbell]

Lorin...
I cut a number of cabinets while I was in Nevis, W. I. and had the same problem. Due to the climb cuts during tenon dado cuts the resulting dados were too tight.

It seems that when reverse direction is selected for outline cuts, dado (tenon) cuts follow that direction. Full dados (pocketed) cut in the conventional direction. This means that the clearance settings dont work well due to the differences in cut direction.

I have reported this to Thermwood and may be added to the next version. You might want to post this issue over there so that they know it happens in more than 1 case, machine or operator.
Gary

[Gary Campbell]

Guys...
For anyone that has had the problem of tenon dados seeming too tight, there is a fix for this coming in our next version of the link. We will be able to cut tenon and full width dados in the same direction which will make the side clearance number much more consistant.

Lorin...
I think the dado cut direction will be independent of the outline direction, so to your question, yes.
Gary

[dlcw]

I, for one, am looking forward to being able to get mortise and tenon joinery that fits right, first time, every time.

The next version of SB Link, according to Larry at Thermwood, is going to help us compensate for the flexing issues so prevalent in our flexible machines (I call mine the FlexBot). This is a version to look forward to!

Don
www.diamondlakewoodworks.com (http://www.diamondlakewoodworks.com)

[Gary Campbell]

Don...
latest cuts are spot on. (version 15b)Now that we can change the direction to conventional... tenon dados are great on my machine. Only had 1 cabinet with full dado, but that was good also.
Gary