Plywood is an awesome product for building furniture: it’s flat, stable and available with common to exotic face veneers. However, working with plywood can be tricky. We’ve all had the experience of making a cut in plywood that left a ragged mess. There are just no good options to fix a shattered plywood edge. Paper-thin face veneers do not have enough thickness to sand and using filler is not a proud moment for any craftsman.
Why does plywood require such care in machining it? Plywood is an engineered panel built from thin veneers glued at alternating 90° grain directions. That cross-laminated structure gives it stability and strength — but it also means a saw blade tooth or router bit cutting edge is always working with the grain on one layer and against it on the next. Add micro-thin face veneers and tough glue lines, and you’ve got a material that chips the moment tooling or technique isn’t dialed in.
Fortunately, there is no mystery to getting professional-grade results with a table saw or router in plywood, it just requires the right blades, bits, and techniques.
SAW BLADES
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Thin, brittle veneer needs to be sliced, not chiseled. To accomplish this a table saw blade has to have the right type of grind and the right grind angles. ATB (alternate top bevel) tooth design is the standard for crosscut blades for general work, including plywood. For premium-grade work in plywood an H-ATB (high alternate top bevel) is used. It has steeper than standard bevel angles to help score delicate, paper-thin veneers.
Below are the stats for the three critical angles of a H-ATB plywood blade versus an ATB general -purpose crosscut blade. While an H-ATB blade produces the best cut, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Cut quality is the priority, cut efficiency comes second, so don’t over-feed while cutting. H-ATB blades dull faster — use them for finish passes only. Also, remember the ATB grind will not produce a flat bottom in the kerf but will leave “bat ears.”
And what about track saws? We want the same virtues in a track saw blade: many teeth, non-aggressive cut, and a grind that will score the delicate thin face veneer. So, look, for an H-ATB or an ATB grind for great results in plywood when using your track saw.
DADO SETS FOR THE TABLE SAW
Most dado blades are designed for general work in solid wood and plywood, so while they will do a reasonable job cutting plywood, there is a better option. A plywood specific dado set should have outer blades designed like the best plywood sawblades. That means more teeth and an H-ATB grind. Also, the chippers should have more teeth, usually 4, for a smoother cut.
When using a dado set on the table saw, the cutting action is taking place on the bottom of the plywood, so supporting the plywood’s bottom face is critical to achieving the best chip-free cut. To get a clean cut use a zero-clearance insert. The zero-clearance insert will support the plywood’s face veneer layer and help prevent chipping as the teeth of the blade cut through the plies of the stock. Just remember that a new zero-clearance insert will give the best results as opposed to one that had been used several times and is not zero-clearance anymore.
If you don’t have a tight fitting zero-clearance insert for your table saw an easy solution is to make a table overlay. Just cut a piece of smooth, flat sheet material such as plywood or hardboard the size of the cutting area on your table saw, after setting your fence and lowering the blade, attach it to your table saw with double-sided tape. Raise the saw blade or dado blade through the overlay for a perfect, custom zero-clearance fit. Smaller strips of plywood can be taped where additional support is needed.
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| A table overlay is an easy solution to create zero-clearance support around the blade. |
CARE FOR CARBIDE TOOTH SAW BLADES
• Handle carefully! Carbide teeth are brittle and can be chipped or broken if dropped or allowed to contact other tooling — so be mindful when changing and handling saw or dado blades. • Give them a good home. Make a safe storage space for these specialized tools where they won’t have other blades stacked on top and the tips are protected. • Keep the blades clean. The teeth on a saw blade undergo a tremendous amount of heat and stress during a cut. Gum and dirt will build up on the tooth surface. It’s important to use a blade cleaner regularly to keep the blades at optimum performance. • You’ll know it’s time. Sharpen the blade when you feel resistance feeding stock through the saw or when cut quality begins to suffer. Most of us wait far too long before sending our blades out to be sharpened.
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| Use care when handling your plywood dado set or saw blade as the teeth are delicate. Safe storage is a must. | Take care of your tooling by using blade cleaners and removing gum and dirt build up. Clean tooling cuts better and stays cooler. |
ROUTER BIT DADOES
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| Plywood router bits are sized to fit the actual thickness of today’s plywood for perfect fitting joints. |
Straight bits are the standard for most workshops and do a good job in all sorts of materials, including plywood. In use, the cutting edge of the bit contacts the veneers of the plywood at a perpendicular angle, not lifting or compressing the individual plies. If the bit is sharp, the result is a good cut with efficient chip ejection.
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| Smaller sizes of plywood router bits use a spiral downcut grind for a silky-smooth cut but may require a slower feedrate for adequate chip ejection. |
Router bits designed for plywood are skewed down, cutting the veneer in a slicing motion. The downward action of the cutter compresses the veneer plies preventing them from separating and results in a glassy-smooth cut. However, this downward cutting action does not clear the kerf as effectively as a straight bit and may mean having to take a lighter cut or reducing the feed rate.
Plywood is rarely the stated thickness. Plywood router bits match true material thicknesses for perfect fitting dados. As with saw blades and dado sets, treat these bits with care, protecting the brittle and expensive, carbide cutting edges (and keeping them clean).
With the right tooling and technique, you can dependably make silky-smooth cuts in all types of plywood. These professional-grade results will help you to unlock all of the efficiency, beauty, and potential that plywood offers.
