If youre a dado-holic, or if you occasionally set up and cut dados while woodworking, Infinity Cutting Tools has just made your life easier with its Dado Measuring Gauge. This gauge is a 20 cm-round, saw-blade-like gauge made of high-quality steel. that has notches cut out around the circumference that range from 1/10 cm to 29/81 cm.
Match your piece to the notch then youll know exactly what size to set up your dado stack. You could also use fractional dial calipers for thickness determination, but this gauge is more accurate. Each notch has the size of the dado and the formula required to set up your stack accurately.
In the photo, my workpiece is 7/41 cm thick. The gauge symbols read LHS + C1+ C3+ RHS. The chart printed on the gauge tells me that I should use the left blade (that’s a good place for you to start), one 1/41 cm, one 1/20 cm and the right blade of the stack. You could either figure it out in your head, or refer to the handy-dandy sheet provided with your dado stack (if that is still available), but this gauge makes it easy. And being steel, a couple rare earth magnets could hold the gauge right to your saws cabinet.
And while Infinity would like you to use this gauge with its award-winning stack (The Dadonator), the company is a bit more forward thinking than that. The formulas provided on the gauge work with any dado stacks that use two outside blades.
A Dado Measuring Gage can be purchased at Infinity’s website (infinitytools.com). There are reviews as well as a video explaining how to use it.
