Thread: what is a dado?

A dado is merely a trench cut in a piece of timber.

You can make them with a router, a special stacked set of table saw blades, or by hand.

They are usually cut across the grain.

You might use them to hold shelves in a cabinet carcase for instance.

In old british houses the walls are usually divided into 3 parts by wooden rails secured to the wall.

The top rail is the picture rail. My last house in the uk ( house built circa 1914 ) had picture rails. you can buy special hooks which hang on the wooden rails to suspend pictures from ( i.e. neither the picture or the hook it hangs from is secured to the wall ). This allows you to move the pictures to different locations. Either the picture sits high on the wall and you can't see the hook or wires or the picture hangs lower and the hook and the wires are visible.

The bottom rail is the dado rail. It is often at a height so that if you move a chair back in a hurry and it bashes the wall then the chair wacks the rail and not the wall ... thus preserving your plaster/paint/wallpaper. Rather than being a boring strip of wood they often have interesting profiles ... like old skirting boards have interesting profiles.

It also saves on wallpaper because you can use shorter lengths because you are only papering from dado rail to picture rail or skirting to dado rail. Its quite normal to have one colour above the picture rail ( often being carried onto the ceiling ) one colour between dado and picture rail and one colour between dado and skirting board.

I didn't have dado rails in my house ( though when you stripped off the wallpaper you could see where they had originally been ) but I put one in my front hallway so that I could lean my bicycle against the wall without ruining the wallpaper.

5. A member of a family of rather average Australian actors and TV personalities.

The bottom rail is the dado rail. It is often at a height so that if you move a chair back in a hurry and it bashes the wall then the chair wacks the rail and not the wall

In Australia, we call them chair rails. Strange name for them, I know but we're like that...

Originally Posted by silentC

5. A member of a family of rather average Australian actors and TV personalities.

Hmmm, I can see how to use a dado blade here...

Originally Posted by silentC

In Australia, we call them chair rails. Strange name for them, I know but we're like that...

Yeah, but we have pitcha rails as well.


P

They're just so the painters know when to stop painting with the ceiling colour and switch to the wall colour. A bit like the gold chain around a hairy man's neck (PC version of the old joke )

If you're a Kiwi it's pronounced Dodo, which opens up a whole new can of extinct worms.

Originally Posted by silentC

5. A member of a family of rather average Australian actors and TV personalities.

So what's a Stopped Dado then ?

Originally Posted by craigb

So what's a Stopped Dado then ?

One that got stopped by a dado blade?

It's when you send one of them a telegram:

***
YOUR ACTING IS ATROCIOUS STOP I CANNOT STAND YOUR CHEESY GRIN AND POOR HUMOUR STOP I WISH YOU WOULD STOP
***

With apologies.

To create a Dado (trench) in timber using a table saw you would need the run it through 5 or 6 times moving the fence a smidgen (or 2 bee's dicks) each time.
A dado blade changes this so you run the timber over 5 or 6 blades at once, creating your trench in one go. No fiddling except to set the width of the blade by adding spacers etc.
New european (CE) tablesaws cannot use these blades as the arbour is too short.

To create an australian dado you take a normal person, add 2 parts sugar, and 3 parts cheese, then stretch and stick in front of a cammera for ever.

A Stopped dado:

It is not the the video machine paused when he starts talking

Wanted to get that in before someone else did.

It is in the example above (shelf in a cabinet) where the trench stops before the front edge of the vertical panel and when it fitted up you cannot see the trench.

Jamie

A 'dado' when applied to saw blades is an American term for a trench or housing.
They never did learn that a dado is a rail around a room to protect the wall from chair backs.
A stopped dado is a trench that only goes part way through the wood and usually made with a router, or saw and chisel if you use the traditional method.
Fortunately, the rest of the English speakers around the world soon learn the American terms from the many films and TV shows but the Yanks think they are the only ones who speak English so never learn the correct words.
I spent 10 years wondering where the rabbit was in my workshop before I found out that they really mean a rebate.