Domino Racks for Dummy Woodworkers

Stack dado set

Antisocial Network staffers are rarely, if ever, surprised to find self-appointed "freelance journalists" who've ventured too far outside their comfort zones to provide useful information. This syndrome seems especially common among the drones who wrote for the site formerly known as eHow.com; content that's now distributed among a number of niche sites. Should we trust the advice of someone with an M Ed who insists on writing about "home improvement"? Not if it's Shellie Braeuner, at least based on her OurPastimes.com post, "How to Build Wooden Domino Racks."

It's a pretty simple project, which meant that Braeuner had to pad her post by explaining how one plays dominoes. Yeah, like someone who needs a domino rack also needs that information. What Shellie probably should have done was mention the standard size(s) of dominoes, which we suspect would be critical to the design step. Whatever the case, she managed to find a simple set of instructions for a domino rack...

...which she then managed to botch in the copy-reword-paste step. We urge interested readers to go straight to the original, since Shellie committed a few errors and omissions along the way. Here are some samples:

• "Install the cutting blade into the table saw. " – What: this yutz thinks you have to install a new blade every time?
• "Make a mark every 1/2 inch across the length of the wood with a pencil. Repeat for each rack." – Exactly why are we doing this?
• "Install a 1/2-inch dado blade in the table saw." – Dado blades come in assorted sizes? We don't think so, Shellie... 
• "Line up the wood with the dado blade." – We aren't real sure what that even means...
• "Move the cutting guide and cut a second groove a 1/2 inch from the edge of the first groove..." – She means the fence there, and this is also why all those pencil lines were a waste of time.

Braeuner's lack of attention to detail and her unfamiliarity with woodworking come through in two omissions. First, the original poster said he eased the edges (we suspect Shellie didn't know what that meant: it's just hitting the corners of the board with sandpaper to round them over slightly). Second, the OP also said to tilt the dado blade at about 10° so the dominoes lean slightly. Our Dumbass of the Day was apparently in too big a hurry to notice that crucial detail. Feh.

DDIY - WOODWORKING