An easy way to make dados on opposite sides of a cabinet line up when using a router to make the dados is to clamp them together so that one setup for a particular dado does them both at the same time. For example, you would lay both sides on a bench with the inside faces of the side facing up and the edges that are the back of the cabinet touching each other. Flush up the tops and bottoms and put a couple of clamps across them to hold them in place. Now you can set up your guide and run the router to do both sides at once. As long as you keep everything square, the dados will always line up with each other.
Good luck with your project. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dan Rossi To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 1:32 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] More on the cedar closet project. Micky, You are correct. It is Western Red Cedar, not aromatic. I keep making that mistake, I guess it is because of how fragrant it is when I am working with it. anyway, the wife had off on Monday for MLK day, so I was jealous and took the day off as well. I spent some quality time in the basement screwing up my closet. and I don't mean putting screws into it. On Saturday I had routed the dados on the inside of one of the closet walls. I did all the math, distance from rail to rail minus the thickness of the floor and ceiling. Minus the thickness of three shelves, divide by four. Take into account the radius of the router shoe, the radius of the cutter. Clamp up a guide rail, take measurements, square everything to hell and back. Route the first dado. Move everything, measure measure measure. Square square square. Measure a bit more. rout the second dado. Move everything again. measure? OK, two short shelves and one tall shelf is probably a better design anyway. Who wants three evenly spaced shelves? Too rigid, too uniform. We need more variation in our lives. Monday, the big trick, making the dados on the other closet wall to line up exactly with the first set. Measure measure measure. Calculate. Measure. Calculate some more. You know that saying, always go with your first choice? Anyway, rout the first dado. Line up the two panels next to each other. After I finished screaming, throwing a few small items, kicking the work bench, and absolutely stunned as to why the bottom of the one dado lines up precisely with the top of the dado I just cut, it dawns on me that I forgot to take into account the thickness of the floor on Mondays cut. OK, I can recover. I'll have to widen out the dado so that the top edge of the new dado lines up with the top of the old one. I'll just have to cut a quarter inch strip off some scrap and glue it in to fill the gap. I opted for a different plan for the next two dados. I had my doubts, but gave it a try. I tried lining up the panels side by side. I clamped the rails together to make as sure as possible that the dados were in the same relative positions to the bottom rails. I put the router into the far end of the dado on the finished panel. I turned the cutter so that it was at it's widest position. I loosely clamped one end of a guide stick down. Moved the router to the end of the dado near where it ran into the new board that hadn't been routed yet. Did the same thing and clamped that end of the guide stick. Now I had a guide that was perfectly parallel to the dado. Some measuring proved this to be true as well. It worked very nicely. Just took for ever since I had to do this two times for each dado. I made the mistake of assuming my 1X8 cedar boards were 3/4 X 7 1/2. Yeah, well not exactly. I guess because they are unfinished on one side, they are actually 15/16 thick. And they are a bit wider than 7.5 inches as well. Since I had to cut a 15/16 dado, I had to make two passes for each one since I don't have a cutter that wide. Well, the dados are all routed now. I need to make the shelves, each one will be three planks of cedar biscuit joined together. I hate gluing. I also have to stretch a couple of the 2X4 rails since I cut them with the assumption of 3/4 by 7 1/2 boards. Oh well, it's all good learning. Later. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. 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