My first real project - garage ceiling shelving

[paulmcohen]

Guess I read into this statement incorrectly.

Or my English leaves lots to be desired.

[a1gutterman]

Don't know where you got the idea I had a 1 1/2" dado blade but I don't. The one pass was refering to depth before changing the table setting, you still need to run the wood over the blade multiple times.

I can understand why Dusty misunderstood you. So did I. Chrispitude was only cutting 3/8" to 1/2" depth, easily done in one pass. He is cutting 1 1/2" width.

Hi Ed in Tampa,

They are real 2x joists and not engineered joists. They are 2x6s or 2x8s.

Hi all,

I appreciate the concerns about my joist strength. I should be clear here that these shelves are actually just a single shelf (not a stack of shelves) suspended from the ceiling, with only 20" between the shelf and ceiling, intended for bulky item storage only. There will not be a heavy load placed on the shelves. If they fall down or sag my floor, I would be surprised (but maybe not too surprised given all of the concern!).

The next step in the project is to cut some dados. I have a Freud SD508 dado stack which is still new-in-box, never used. I've never cut a dado in my life. Let me see if I can describe this:

• I have 32 4-foot pieces of 2x4.
• In each of these 32 pieces, I need to cut a dado on each end, for a total of 64 dados.
• At each end, I must cut a 1.5" wide dado across the 3.5" width of the 2x4, which will allow another 2x4's end to be fastened into the slot.
• The dado will be 3/8" or 1/2" deep (not sure yet).
• The edge of the dado closest to the 2x4 end must be 7 13/16" from the end.

So basically, I need to cut a 1.5" wide dado across the 3.5" width of a 2x4, a precise distance in from the end.

What's the best way to do this? I can't cut a dado 1.5" wide in one pass, so I'll need to do it in two passes. Here is my current thinking:

• Set up the dado to be a hair over 3/4" wide.
• Set up a stop so that the dado will be cut with the far edge exactly 7 13/16" in from the stop.
• Make this dado cut across all of the work pieces, including an extra scrap test piece.
• Move the stop precisely two hairs under 3/4" further away from the blade.
• Dado the test piece and make sure the end of a 2x4 fits snugly into the dado. It should now be exactly 1.5" wide, or as close as my skill can get to it.
• Make this dado cut across all of the work pieces.

For the second dado cut on the test piece, I'll try to sneak up on the desired width rather than overcutting. Does this seem like a reasonable thing to do?

Will I be fine cutting a 3/4" wide dado, 3/4" deep, all at once with an 8" dado stack? Or do I need to do that in successive depths? Do I need to use a certain speed setting with an 8" dado versus a 6" dado? (I haven't looked this up in the manual yet, so I really should do my homework and read the manual before attempting any of this.)

Feedback is greatly appreciated!

- Chris

[chrispitude]

Hi dusty,

You are right - my lighting is on the same garage circuit as the Shopsmith. It's a 20A circuit run with 12-2, so it should be up to the task. The Shopvac I use for dust collection is on a different breaker, but interestingly I also hear it change pitch slightly as the Shopsmith comes up to speed. Perhaps I have a weak underground supply from the roadside box to the house, I don't know. I do intend to run a separate 20A breaker for the Shopsmith some day, but not today.

You've mentioned your concern over my featherboard stop a couple times, so I want to make sure I am understanding you properly. I am using the featherboard as a poor man's stop, in the same way as I believe you are using your stop. The fence-mounted featherboard is pulled all the way forward to me, so I can put the workpiece against it, then have it clear the featherboard completely well before it meets the blade. There is a feather-board-wide gap between the workpiece and the fence when the workpiece meets the blade. Is this what you are intending to make sure of, or do you still see something unsafe with this?

I snuck downstairs this morning to sneak a bit more progress in before I had to get to work. First, I had to decide where the support posts would be relative to the shelf planking. Here is the rough arrangement I decided on:

[ATTACH]1388[/ATTACH]

I wanted the supports to be far apart enough to be able to place long/bulky items onto the shelves, but not too long that the 2x4s will sag in the middle. The arrangement above seems good to me. The shelves will not be used to store heavy items, so I am going to proceed with it.

Next I needed to perform some computations to determine the gap between the slats. To do this, I need to know the total amount of open space, and the number of open spaces it gets spread across.

• The workpiece is 48" long.
• There are 11 slats, each 3.5" wide. Subtract 11*3.5 = 38.5".
• There are two vertical 2x4 support posts, each 1.5" in width. Subtract 3".
• The total gap is 6.5". There are 8 gaps I want to spread this across, so the gap between the planks is 13/16".

Now, how far in must the dado be from each end of the 48" piece? Well there will be two slats and a gap, so that's 7 13/16" from the end to the outer edge of the dado.

Here's a picture of the Shopsmith setup for dadoing:

[ATTACH]1389[/ATTACH]

Here's a picture of "My First Dado":

[ATTACH]1390[/ATTACH]

Awww, it's so cute!!

My dado stack is set up to cut a 13/16" wide dado. Now, I wanted to go with the two-stop method of cutting a 1.5" wide dado. To do this, I needed to know how much further out the second stop needed to be. Of course, by the numbers this would be 24/16" - 13/16" = 11/16". But, I took a look at the pile of scraps from trimming the planks to length:

[ATTACH]1391[/ATTACH]

I could use one of these scraps as an extra stop in addition to my primary stop. In essence, the dado becomes wider by the width of this extra stop. All I really needed to do is to find a scrap in this pile which - when combined with the current dado width - puts me at my target width.

Ah ha, here's my man!

[ATTACH]1392[/ATTACH]

...continued...

[chrispitude]

I noticed that with 2x4s, I couldn't use the fence-mounted featherboard as a stop (the knobs were in the way) so I used this other fence-mounted thingy instead. I cut a couple pieces of double-stick tape and stuck my second stop block to the red thing which will be my primary stop block. I then positioned the rip fence so the second stop block measured 7 13/16" away from the closest dado tooth:

[ATTACH]1393[/ATTACH]

I know it looks like the width of the stop block isn't consistent, but I actually just taped it on the red thing crooked.

I took a longer test piece and ran it through twice, against the first stop and second stop. Then I took one of my 2x4s and tried test-fitting the end... did I get it close? here goes...

[ATTACH]1394[/ATTACH]

Wow, it fits! It's not tight, but it's not loose either. It basically slides in with slight contact on both sides. Since the joint will be further glued and triple-screwed, I think this will work out perfectly.

In the dado I double-cut, I noticed a groove on the dado floor:

[ATTACH]1395[/ATTACH]

This seems to be due to the outer dado blades cutting slightly deeper at the very end. I remember reading about this, but I didn't think about it until now. It won't affect this joint, but it was interesting enough to take a picture.

When I checked to make sure the dado was 7 13/16" away from the end, I noticed it was about 1/16" too far. I unlocked the rip fence and nudged it 1/16" towards the dado, then locked it back down.

- Chris

[dusty]

Chris, the progress is great and the work you are doing is going to look real professional. I'm sure you will be proud. Once the little woman sees all of this come to fruition, her list of honey-dos will grow like crazy. Be prepared.

Your use of the feather board and fence straddling pusher are very adequate for this task. In fact, you may have given me an idea of what can be done with a 510 fence straddler that was harvested from the 520 upgrade.

I was thinking different on the two stop system but your solution works great. If you don't mind (nah, even if you do) that's going in my bag of tricks.

[a1gutterman]

..................I wanted the supports to be far apart enough to be able to place long/bulky items onto the shelves, but not too long that the 2x4s will sag in the middle. The arrangement above seems good to me. The shelves will not be used to store heavy items, so I am going to proceed with it...................

Hi Chris,
It looks like your first real project will be a success! Let me tell you, you could put a couple of engine blocks on those 2X4's and they still wood not sag. Might pull the ceiling down, but they wood not sag.

[chrispitude]

Thanks dusty! I like this 2-stop system. In fact, I am contemplating how I could make some sort of fence-mounted stop that has an adjustable bumpout width, which would make this even more useful. I am thinking along the lines of two wedges could slide against each other to vary their overall width, plus some sort of knob to hold them in place. You could even mark the tops with graduation marks to denote the effect on the width (easily determined by knowing the angle and the distance between marks, and a bit o' trigonometry). Hmm, that might be useful in general as a fine-tuneable stop...

I finished cutting all the dados:

[ATTACH]1406[/ATTACH]

I got into a pretty good rhythm. The two-stop method absolutely makes this a more efficient process. Two dados on one side, rotate 180, two dados on the other side. I had to really pay attention to make sure I only rotated end-for-end, and did not also flip and cut the second dado on the wrong side. I was surprised how much a dado cut was affected by knots in the wood, but I guess I am not too surprised.

Each group of four workpieces represents a single ceiling-mounted shelf. For each group of four, I laid them out ahead of time and chose their orientations depending on which wide I wanted to present for view. In this way, I was able to hide knots, ragged edges, ink stamp designations, etc. from view without any great heroics. I'd lay the set of four on the floor with the side to be dadoed down, power up the Shopsmith and cut all four boards, then power down and bring the next set of boards over.

Quick note - this much precision is absolutely not needed for this simple project. However, this is my first project and it's a good opportunity for me to learn how to cut with good precision so I have a better handle on it when it does matter.

How did my Shopvac stack up for dust collection? For dado cutting, not very well I'm afraid:

[ATTACH]1407[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]1408[/ATTACH]

I have to admit it seemed like I didn't even have the thing hooked up. This is unfortunate.

I even tried closing the gap in the lower guard to help keep sawdust in the guard area:

[ATTACH]1409[/ATTACH]

You can see in this picture that most of it is being thrown out of a small hole/gap near the front of the lower guard. The dado seems to cut larger chips of wood, and the chips carry more momentum as they are thrown such that the dust collection airflow can't grab them before being thrown out this hole. I guess I am just not really too impressed with this lower guard, although maybe my problem is still insufficient airflow.

After the first few dados were cut, I noticed they needed to be a hair wider. This was easily accomplished by putting two strips of masking tape on the second stop to slightly increase its width:

[ATTACH]1410[/ATTACH]

- Chris

[Ed in Tampa]

Chris
If you really want to know how effective your dust collection is make a few dado cuts in the wood without the vac. I assure you, you collected 95+% of the dust.

Before I had a dust collector I made a bunch of dado cuts in some wood. When I finished I was knee deep in dust. Even now I use my RAS which I don't bother connecting to a my dust collector. After cutting a few boards I have as much dust as you do after making all these cuts.

Don't sell your dust collection short it seems to be working, I don't care what machine you have or how powerful the dust collection you will always have some dust escape. That is just the nature of woodworking.

[Bruce]

Golly, this 8" dado stacks is heavy. I swapped out the saw blade table insert for the never-used dado insert and removed the riving knife. I raised the table and pulled the headstock to the left and removed the saw arbor and attached the dado arbor. Did I mention the dado stack sure is heavy?

Two things come to mind. 1) turn the speed to slow before shutting down, so you won't stress the motor or blow a breaker. 2) I hope you have a two bearing quill with all that weight bearing down on it.

[charlese]

You can see in this picture that most of it is being thrown out of a small hole/gap near the front of the lower guard. The dado seems to cut larger chips of wood, and the chips carry more momentum as they are thrown such that the dust collection airflow can't grab them before being thrown out this hole. I guess I am just not really too impressed with this lower guard, although maybe my problem is still insufficient airflow.

After the first few dados were cut, I noticed they needed to be a hair wider. This was easily accomplished by putting two strips of masking tape on the second stop to slightly increase its width:
- Chris

I've been following your saga (er - project) with some interest!

Three comments:
Looks like your storage shelf is going to be stout enough - as Tim mentioned you could probably put an engine block up there. But that's probably not a good idea until you first install a lift.

Yep! you hit the nail on the head! Insufficient air flow is your debris problem! When you checked out your shop vac, was the filter covered? Those things aren't designed to suck up big volumes of stuff. Even though it may be 8 gallons or so,( it'll easily get 5 gallons of water), but with sawdust, the smaller chips plug up the filter, hindering air flow. Dont blame the lower saqw guard!

Referring to other threads - Your idea of using two strips of masking tape is a GREAT idea!!!:D This method of adding tape may fully replace the micro adjusting mechanisms others pay many dear dollars to get.