Ripped out my old dado set and switched to a stacking one mid-job

I was using a cheap wobble dado for years on my jobsite saw, but last month I finally swapped to a Freud stacking set for a kitchen cabinet run. The clean cut on the first test piece made me wonder why I waited so long to spend the extra 150 bucks. Has anyone else made the switch and noticed a big difference?

2 comments

2 Comments

sean_park81mo ago

Stick with the wobble dado if your saw is a cheap jobsite model. Those older saws have a lot of vibration and the arbor might not be true to begin with. A stacking dado set will just show you all of those problems in your cut quality. Plus if you ever bang the arbor or the saw gets knocked around, a bent arbor will mess up a stacking set way worse than a wobble dado. I seen guys throw good money at a stacking set only to find out their saw can't handle it. Keep the cheap wobble dado for the portable saw, save the nice stacking set for a cabinet saw.

skylercooper1mo ago

Man that reminds me of when I was building cabinets for my sister's kitchen a few years back. I had this old Craftsman jobsite saw that wobbled like crazy, and I spent a whole weekend trying to dial it in with a new Freud stacking set. Turns out the arbor was fine but the belt was loose and the pulley was slightly bent from when I dropped it loading it into my truck. Fixed the pulley and tightened the belt and suddenly my cuts were glass smooth. Never would have caught that with my old wobble dado because it just masked all the chatter. Sometimes you gotta let the tool tell you what's wrong with the machine.