drilling holes

[Jonathan Lester]

I'm sure this is a very simple fix. Just as my subject staes I am trying to drill holes in gables. We will be running blind dados to assemble our cabinets, we don't have a case clamp so we where planning on drilling holes through the center of the dado and screwing the cabinet together until the glue dries. So how do I go about drilling 1/8" holes in the gables?

[DanEpps]

You have to place them manually using the Part Editor.

[Glenn Van Reason]

I know there was an issue trying to drill through a dado, Paul Ford was developing the same system for cabinet construction.

Any suggestions Paul?

[Michael S Murray]

I havent tried this in a while, there may have been a fix, but if not you will get an error when trying to write code.If it is fixed please let us know.

[Damon Nabors]

You will have to figure the center of the dado and go into parts editor and place them there.

[Brian Shannon]

I have tried this recently and it still gives problems. In my case, I didn't get an error but my 5mm holes were about 3/8" and my dadoes(blind) did not cut at all. I've also had this with full dadoes.

[DanEpps]

Which side did you put the holes on Brian? Does it make any difference whether they are placed on the dado side or the outside?

[Paul Ford]

I did manage to get this to work a little while back. Placing the holes in a blind dado with 100% cut was done very easily in the part editor and it didnt come back with any errors for me. Occasionally it came back with an error saying it may effect tenons or something like that but it never actually caused an issue. I did find that if the dado was only 50% that it couldn't find the appropriate tool for an operation which was simply because the edge of the hole was touching the edge of the dado. I offset the hole in the dado and it worked as far as I can remember, this may not work in some cases depending on what guage screws and what thickness materials you are using.
I will be looking further into this in the very near future to get it all working properly. I may decide to just use blind dado and squirt some glue in, then wack a panel pin or something to hold it till the glue goes off. Not too keen on this option but it could work for others.

[Michael S Murray]

Hey Guys, I dont have time to try this, but I am thinking that if you put your holes on from the outside, and then leave them just short of going through into the dado you might get it to work. I have used this method in a couple other situations and it worked. Say you have .750 material, a .375 dado and then a .300 hole depth. I am betting this will machine and the .050 skin between the hole and dado should not bother assembly. If it works you could even tune it in to a smaller thickness..

[DanEpps]

Hey Guys, I dont have time to try this, but I am thinking that if you put your holes on from the outside, and then leave them just short of going through into the dado you might get it to work. I have used this method in a couple other situations and it worked. Say you have .750 material, a .375 dado and then a .300 hole depth. I am betting this will machine and the .050 skin between the hole and dado should not bother assembly. If it works you could even tune it in to a smaller thickness..

That's sort of what I was wondering...if you placed the holes on the outside, would they work. It sounds logical at least...

[Paul Ford]

I dont see why that wouldnt work. The only reason I personally didnt try that is because I wanted to save on machine time as much as possible and drilling from the oposite side to the dado would require a flip operation which is what I was trying to avoid.

[DanEpps]

Yeah, I thought about that. It seems that you could probably drill them manually faster than doing all the flip-ops.

[Paul Ford]

Thats exactly the same conclusion I came up with You can drill through the dado from the same side of the dado with no problems if the dado is 100% thickness. We do this with a few of our cabinets with great success.

[Brian Shannon]

I ended up drilling by hand too. It sure would be nice to have the holes drilled @ the router though...

[Vince Lisanti]

I use blind dado construction also and with zip-r screws do not have to pre-drill at all on veneer core ply. The cutter nibs on the screws and under the head do the pre drilling for you. Always works like a charm for me.

Vince

CCS woodworks inc.