> I'm wondering how the hand holes are cut proffessionally.
> What kind of tools is used? A regular straight dado or
> route bit cut work ok, but they feel and look cheap to me.

They use specialized tools.  Steve Forest of Brushy Mountain
gave me the grand tour of his expanded facilities, and
showed me a number of quaint Victorian antiques that he has
for making woodenware.  Most of them are dedicated to specific
operations in the making of beekeeping woodenware, and some
of them look like they date from the days of steam power,
and were only adapted to electricity after World War II.  :)

Note the curved inner surface of the handhold.  Dead give-away.
The shape of the handhold itself shows that the saw bade is
rotated through 90 degrees, from parallel to the surface of
the wood, down to perpendicular with the surface of the wood.
Another way to do this would be to keep the blade still, and
rotate a set of clamps that hold the board around the blade.

But many table saws do not allow the blade to rotate down below
the work surface when the blade depth is 1/2 inch, so the board
to be cut will have to sit on spacers that allow it to sit above
the blade when the blade is at it's smallest angle.

But if your table saw angle crank is anything like mine, this would
be a very slow and tedious process.

Here's what I'd do, as this will give you "more to grab onto"
than the usual handhold:

a)  Use the dado, but set it at a 45-degree angle.
    (This is much less dangerous than it looks,
     moreso if one uses the "stacked blade" type
     dado.)

b)  Set the height to the appropriate height for the
    stock you are using.

c)  Lower the blade, counting how many full rotations
    of the crank are required to get the blade below
    the work surface.

d)  Clamp the board in position on the work surface.

e)  Crank the blade up whatever number of crank rotations
    you lowered it in (c), and then crank it back down.

f)  Remove board, replace with another

g)  Lather, rinse, repeat

h)  Dream about motorizing the cranks with a worm gear
    and a reversible servomotor, as the process is as
    tedious as heck.

i)  Get bored, stop cutting gouges in your supers, and
    simply screw on wood blocks as "handles", making
    sure to check clearance for outer covers above the
    handle.

j)  Add similar wood blocks to all supers, even the
    ones that were store-bought.

                jim

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