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Making a dado to fit a piece of 3/4″ plywood can be an exercise in frustration. The wood is never exactly 3/4″ thick, is it? The folks at Rockler have come up with a clever solution to this problem—a jig that cuts the dado in two passes using a standard 1/2″ bit.
You don’t have to reset anything for the second pass. You just pick up the router, turn it around, and rout again. The second pass widens the first pass. This method allows you to cut infinitely-adjustable dadoes to fit any material from 1/8″ to 1″ thick.
The jig mounts directly to the router, replacing the baseplate. One side of the jig slides in and out, changing the jig’s width. This “sliding edge” has a scale that tells you how wide the dado will be. For example, if you use a 1/2″ bit and the scale reads 3/16″, the dado will be 1/2″ plus 3/16″ wide (11/16″). If you use a 3/8″ bit on this setting, the dado will be 3/8″ plus 3/16″ wide (9/16″).
Once you’ve set the jig’s width (and that usually requires some trial and error cuts), you hold the jig along a straightedge and make the first pass. Then you turn the router around, so that the jig’s other edge is against the straightedge, and finish the dado.
Both edges of the Rockler Dado Jig are designed to hook into a channel on Rockler’s Low-Profile Straight Edge Clamp System, ensuring that the jig doesn’t wander from the straightedge, but you can use it with any edge guide.
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