FELDER DADO vs FORREST DADO KING

[bobreed2010]

I am in the process of purchasing a Hammer K3 to replace my General 350 of 25 years.

For the past 35 years, I was a hobby woodworker. But now at age 61, I fell back on woodworking as a full time career, unable to find a job to my liking elsewhere.

I have owned a Dado King for 20+ years and love it.
I rarely sharpen it though, because it takes too long to ship to Forrest, is expensive to ship and to sharpen, so the results are not like new when I use it, but it works. I had it sharpened locally last year but nowhere near as good as when done at Forrest.

I am intrigued by the Felder with the replaceable insert tooling, but you pay a stiff price upfront ($739 vs $348).
At $80 per sharpening for the Forrest, it takes 4+ sharpening's to make up the difference in price.

I dado mostly 3/4" prefinished maple plywood for frameless kitchen cabinetry and must have a splinter-free crosscut dado.

Can someone with a Felder convince me I can get a clean crosscut dado and that it is worth the money.

Thanks, Bob

 

[magellan]

Hi Bob

The FELDER dado is a nice piece and it it cuts very nice.  I'm sure someone will elaborate on it in more detail.  If there is a draw back it would be the knickers that cut the sides of the dado wall.  They make a slightly deeper cut.  It has never bothered me but some people it might.  As for being a quality piece of tooling it is top notch in my opinion.  The bore I believe is 30 mm

 

[ben_r_]

What saw will you be using it with? Not a SawStop is it?

 

[patriot]

[member=64457]bobreed2010[/member]

I also just purchase a K3 and ordered the dado set as well. The K3 should be delivered towards the end of April or so I was told.

I have used the Forrest dado set for many years, but have had mixed results.  In truth, I am using an old Craftsman TS whose arbor is far less than perfect. The area between the unthreaded arbor section and the threaded section is (or was) somewhat of a void allowing the right-blade to not line up correctly. 

About a two weeks back I took JB Weld to it and did manage to fill in this void.  While that helped somewhat, when looking at a 1/4-inch finger joint it is easy to see that the two cutters still do not line up. 

Is this Forrest's fault?  I have no idea, but I do hope I will have better success with the Hammer/Felder dado set than I have had with the Forrest dado set.

[attachimg=2]

This is the before  image showing the section that the rightmost cutter rides on.

[attachimg=3]

This image shows the void filled with JB Weld's Steel Stik goop.

OK finally got the images to post. Sorry for the screw up.

 

[magellan]

I have been using the FELDER dado set since 2004 with no problems.  I own both sets the small and the large set.  Everything is debatable but I don't know if you can find a better dado set.  If memory serves me correctly the FELDER tooling is manufactured by Lietz. 

 

[bobreed2010]

[member=64457]bobreed2010[/member]

I have used the Forrest dado set for many years, but have had mixed results.  In truth, I am using an old Craftsman TS whose arbor is far less than perfect.

The problem is the Craftsmen tablesaw. My Forrest Dado cuts a perfect flat bottom dado when properly sharpened.

 

[junk731]

I have used the Forrest Dado King and the 8" Felder dado set. I own the Freud SD508 rebored with pin holes added and the Hammer 7" Dado from Felder. They all work well in wood, MDF, VC plywood and PC. The Freud works the best for cutting Melamine IMHE. It has more teeth and negative hook which seems to help the process in Melamine with almost no chipout. The added bonus is they all work on the Felder shapers. For Hammer owners I believe you can only safely run the Forrest 6" dado king or the Hammer 7" Dado. Its questionable now whether Leitz is making any of the Felder tooling since 2008 but its made by another european outfit.

John.

 

[Poindexter]

I just got the 6" Forrest Dado King to go with my K3.  So far I've made 5 walnut picture frames with the stack and they all turned out fine.  Had to do a little cleanup with a chisel, but not a big deal when saving $300 vs the Felder "dado shaper."

 

[Rod Sheridan]

Bob, I have the FS Tools 6" set for my B3, it works great............Regards, Rod.

 

[andygiddings]

I have the smaller Felder Dado set on my C3 - zero issues, cuts very cleanly even with deeper cuts, dead easy to set up. I believe the Hammer range requires the smaller diameter set (180mm) and only the larger Felder machines (700 and up) can take the larger diameter set (228mm).

Magellan's statement about the knickers is the only down side but it's very slight. And your machine needs to have the dado option included when ordered of course.