Thread: Dados

Originally Posted by China

everone is entitled to his or her opinion, be they right or be they wrong

It's not my opinion, it's a fact. What, do you think I made it up?

Here you go, I'll even take the time to type something in from some books I've got:

Plow a trench down the length of a board and you've made a groove. Run that groove cross-grain and now it's called a dado.

The book is written by a bloke called Gary Rogowski: The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery.

Or

3. Housed and Shouldered or Tongued and Trenched or Dado Joint.
-Stronger than the angle lap joint. A barefaced tongue is worked on the end of one member to fit into a groove or trench cut across the face of the other member. Used in box construction, corners of cabinets and cheap drawers.

That one is from Woodwork in Theory and Practice by John A. Walton ACT. It was the standard woodworking textbook in NSW schools. First published in 1947 by the Australasian Publishing Company.

Housings/dadoes for fixed shelves can be worked right through or stopped short of the front edge so that they do not show ...

That's from Encyclopedia of Furniture Making by Ernest Joyce, another standard textbook published in 1970.

Awful lot written about a thing that doesn't exist by people who should know better, eh, China?

Originally Posted by eddie the eagle

Hi Groggy,

A trench is a cross grain housing, a groove is with the grain. A dado is a US term for a trench.

Best regards,

eddie

This is exactly what we were taught during my apprenticeship in <st1><st1>Sydney</st1></st1>, (except that the word "dado" was never heard of) and also the terms I have always used during my 38 years in the trade so far.
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All of my joinery has the shelves, bottoms, rails etc, trenched into the gables and I have always used a router with an adjustable jig made for the job. (The top rails are usually dovetailed into the gables)
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Router tables and trenching heads are great for perfectly flat boards but timber isn’t always flat so the small base of a router follows the cup if there is one giving you the same depth trench across the board.



These days I think it’s good to know the terms used in other countries so you know what they’re talking about and what you’re ordering when buying tools etc.
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It’s amazing how some things stick in you memory, just don’t ask me something important like my kids birth dates or what year I was married.
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Kind regards,
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Keith

I still beleive the term "dado" to describe a type of joint to be a misnomer

Names change and evolve, they always have. Australians have bastardised the English language until it cried "uncle". Then they twisted it some more.

The Joyce books are recognised as classic texts and they use the term. At the other end of the spectrum, "Norm" uses the term dado every day on his shows so, right or wrong, it is now entrenched in the language.

If you really want to get the picture, host a party and write on the invite:

Dress - nothing but stubbies, thongs and gay faces.

Depending on the era of your friends, you may have a very lively party or no-one will turn up .

Dado is a term that's here to stay, no matter how it got here, it is here.

Originally Posted by Groggy

Dado is a term that's here to stay, no matter how it got here, it is here.

A-yup.

Heard more commonly every day. Language changes, as you said.

Cheers,

eddie

Originally Posted by silentC

If the meaning of words never changed, or new words weren't invented, the people who print dictionaries would've been out of a job hundreds of years ago after they printed the first one.

Language, especially English as the world's default lingua franca, is a work in progress; always has been, always will be. It took me a while to accept this. About the same time as he wrote the first dictionary, Dr. Johnson despaired that the English language was going to hell in a handbasket. I guess because spellings and usages didn't stand still long enough for him to describe them.

Joe

I still beleive the term "dado" to describe a type of joint to be a misnomer

everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, be they right or be they wrong

Dr. Johnson despaired that the English language was going to hell in a handbasket. I guess because spellings and usages didn't stand still long enough for him to describe them.

As brilliantly parodied in Blackadder Ink and Incapability.

Originally Posted by silentC

everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, be they right or be they wrong

Touché.