The Top Four Rabbet Joints; How to Cut A Rabbet Joint With A Table Saw!

Rabbet joints are easily cut in quick succession with a table saw. Set your dado blade to cut the blind rabbet exactly half the width of your stock and adjust the rip fence to be the same distance from the blade. You might have to run test cuts first, but once that’s confirmed, you can confirm you’ve learned how to cut a rabbet joint with a table saw.

The rabbet joint is used for constructing furniture, panels, cabinets, and dressers and therefore is pretty useful. of course, there are other joints and methods used to construct or maintain these products, such as french cleats, which you can also make with a table saw, but all have their own uses, and you’d have to read in a little more detail to find out which one best fits your needs.

There are four basic kinds of rabbet joints. This article highlights them all and represents how easily each can be cut by using a table saw by presenting you with methodic processes for cutting each rabbet joint on a table saw.

Different Rabbet Joints and How To Cut Them

Joint #1: Overlap Rabbet

Overlap rabbets are made from one large rabbet. This rabbet is simple to make and serves various project applications of overlapping joints.

First, measure the thickness of rabbet cuts using the width of the mating part, and using that width as a criterion, set the distance between the rip fence and the blade. It also has a tongue that is long enough to cover the width of the mating part of the rabbet.

An overlap rabbet joint consists of one rabbet with a tongue long enough to cover the thickness of the mating part. It’s a good choice for assembling drawers when the economy is more important than brute strength or high style.

Overlap rabbets are the preferred way to conceal back panels in cabinetry, and they offer more surface area for glue than butt joints when building boxes or holders of all sorts.

Raise the table saw blade to make the shoulder cut in one pass, pushing it across the rip fence and miter gauge scrap fence. You can cut the rabbet in two keys with a standard blade, as shown here, or tackle it in a single swipe with a dado head.

Reinforce this cross-grain glue joint with dowels or fasteners driven through the rabbet tongue. Make your second cut to form the cheek and finish the language; a shop-made tenoning jig will make this cut more accessible and stable.

Note: If you want to be sure you’ll be successful, keep note of your blade’s alignment before you begin. Here’s a guide on how to align your table saw blade.

Joint #2: Double Rabbet

Double rabbets combine two overlapping rabbet joints for laying out and assembling furniture carcasses.

To successfully work this, clamp a sacrificial front to your rip fence and bury a wider dado head inside it. Double rabbet joints offer the same self-aligning benefits as overlap rabbets, only this time, both parts are rabbeted to fit together one over the other.

If you don’t own a biscuit joiner or a pocket-screw jig, here’s a good alternative for bringing those cabinet or box carcasses together with fewer headaches.

Make a few test cuts in scrap wood to check the dado blade to establish the proportions you want when cutting your rabbet. Then, lock the parts with brads to strengthen the glue bond and form a mechanical connection. The stepped design of the joint will keep large panels from shifting out of whack once the glue is applied and you’ve installed the clamps.

The most efficient way to cut double rabbets, especially on larger workpieces, is facedown on the saw table with a dado blade. Use a feather board to keep the workpieces tight while you cut rabbets, supporting with a miter gauge if necessary.

If you adjust the proportions carefully so the tongue is exactly half the thickness of the workpiece, one setup takes care of both halves of the joint.

Along with glue, reinforce your double-rabbet joints with pin nails or brads through the side of the joint that won’t be visible in the finished project.

Joint #3: Shelving Rabbet

When you think about how to cut a rabbet joint with a table saw, shelving rabbets most certainly come to mind. These joints are a simple rabbet and dado combination, perfect for making plywood shelving.

You can make any size of dado cuts you’d like for the shelving as long as the blade is narrower than the plywood; a crosscut sled will aid in making straight, even cuts.

Don’t worry if you don’t have the tools – here’s a guide to learning how to build a crosscut sled.

The day will probably never come again when the plywood will be a proper 3/4″ thick, but that doesn’t mean you have to invest in those specialized, undersized plywood bits for your router to work with.

Use the same blades for cutting the dadoes and shape the tongue and shoulder for the rabbet using a feather board and sacrificial fence to set the projection and height.

You don’t have to shim a dado set to match the sheet thickness. Instead, turn to this simple shallow-shouldered rabbet joint and make that funky plywood thickness conform to your will.

The shelving rabbets will fit together nicely and tight and be as good as, if not better, similar joints cut out by little router bits.

Start by cutting the dado side of the joint to the width you prefer. As long as the blade’s cutting width is narrower than the thick plywood, you’re all set — 1/2″ or 5/8″ works well. Then, clamp a sacrificial fence to the rip fence.

Adjust the blade’s height and projection to cut the rabbet’s tongue so it matches the dado proportions—fitting and fastening shelving cut rabbets.

This shelving rabbet and dadoes fit tightly enough to use naturally, but fastening them with nails or glue will lend extra strength to the joints. In a couple of test cuts, sneak up on the precise fit.

How’s that for taking the hassle out of matching those odd fractions? It’s a thrifty, problem-solving joint that works no matter what plywood you use.

Joint #4: Blind Rabbet

Blind-cut rabbets are easy to cut in quick succession with a table saw, but they are also impressively strong.

Set your dado blade to cut the blind rabbet half the width of your stock and adjust the rip fence to be the same distance from the edge. Blind rabbet joints use the pairing of a rabbet and dado to the best advantage.

Speaking of adjusting fences, learn more about how to adjust a DeWalt table saw fence here.

Here, the rabbet’s tongue is cut to fit a dado on the mating part so that the pieces can lock together positively. It’s an ideal joint for building drawer boxes covered by a separate drawer face—test cutting blind rabbet joinery cut.

Before committing to the blind rabbet cuts, please test it out on scrap with the dado side against a rip fence supported by the miter gauge and scrap fence. Or use it to install the back panel on drawers with fancier front corner joinery.

Since the dado surrounds the rabbet, there’s ample surface area for glue, and there is no need to add extra fasteners for reinforcement.

Finish the blind rabbet using a simple T-jig along the top of the fence without changing the blade or fence. Blind rabbets are as efficient to build as they are sturdy.

You can bang them out “production style” with a single dado-blade setup if the thicknesses of the parts match.

But be careful: your blade and fence settings must be spot on for these parts to slip together. Even the slightest discrepancy in saw settings will produce a mismatched joint.

These various methods are pretty particular, right? Well, if you’re up to checking out a practical overview, cutting a rabbet joint with a table saw becomes easier because you can follow the process outlined with a little more clarity as well.

Of course, the above article provides a little more in-depth detail, but here’s the video for you:

The Bottom Line

This covers the basics of learning how to cut a rabbet joint with a table saw. While this outlined quite a few methods, you’ll just have to go through, consider your project, pinpoint which will be perfect for your needs, and then follow the process. But if you still think you don’t know enough, feel free to check out Rabbets in detail.

Of course, if you end up realizing you don’t need to cut a rabbet joint at all in the end, don’t worry! There are a ton of other ways of cutting that might apply. Why not check out our guide on Cutting a Straight Edge on a Table Saw to see if that’s the cut you’re looking to use on your woodworking project?

Regardless, we hope this helped, and good luck with your table saw!

Learn more table saw knowledge with “How High Should A Table Saw Be?”