Search query: «"dovetail jig"»

Re: dovetail jig setup

Mike V.

>Thanks Jack, I revisited my jig again and have found out what the problem was and have since corrected the issue. I've tried the "doing it by hand" perhaps I'll come back to that at a later time. But in the mean time I will work with what I have. I don't have a problem with working with "cheap stuff" at times. I have the confidence that I can make it work as it has in the past. So, with that thanks again....

Re: dovetail jig setup

Jack Guzman

>Mike,Dovetail jigs are the main reason I started down the hand tool path. It seemed the only decent ones cost hundreds of dollars so being the cheapskate I am I learned how to cut them by hand. When I found out how easy that was I started looking at other hand tool solutions to perform former power tool operations. I never looked back.---Jack

Re: dovetail jig setup

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>My first suggestion is that this is a question for the main board, not hand tools, since the main tool is a router, only assisted by the jig. Aren't too many jigs in hand tool usage.

Pam

dovetail jig setup

Mike V.

>I was wondering if anyone could offer some advice on a problem I�m having. I have a dovetail jig, the pins & tails can be cut at the same time. In the setup procedures it mentions taking the vertical piece of wood and shifting it �one slot� (template) to the left. Thereby, the vertical and horizontal pieces of wood are offset now (1/2"). After running the router through and subsequently trying to put the two pieces together I�m finding that the pin and tails don�t align. They're offset by one pin & tail.

I�ve tried shifting the vertical piece of wood to the other side and then tried centering on the horizontal piece and still keep coming up with misaligned pins & tails by one slot (1/2"), mostly offset by one slot. I�m at a �brick wall� now and can�t figure what I�m doing wrong.

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips? Thanks in advance.

Re: Shoot the ends

Dominic in Bucks County PA

>Back in my power tools day when i was workign with my leigh Dovetail Jig I learned the folly of NOT having square ends on my workpieces. Since then I check all boards and end up shooting the ends

And since I got a LN#9 (I just love using that bad boy!) and made a shoot board I shoot all the items I cut. I look for an excuse to use it!

Re: Things that hand... easily - or so you think

ThomD

>I'm sure we are mostly on the same page. I still think there is a diference between a jig and a tool though it may not be the kind of thing that con actually be proven, say, topologically. In that field I think they claim one does not wear a shirt over one's body, because of how it can be removed. Things are open to interpretation. But unisaw seems different to me from a jig. A leigh jig is designed to use a router, but it isn't a router. the jig is the part designed to make dovetails pretty much exclusively. A finger joint jig on a unisaw is a way of converting one of the most versatile tools in a shop into a single purpose thing, if not permanently. The conceptual underpinings of the Legh jig could be adapted to hand tools, basically morphing the spacing and fitting features to the LV magnetic dovetail jig.

Re: Watch closely

wilbur

>Well, I know what I've taken away from this demo.

1. Quick summary of Rob's method of cutting dovetails.

2. Proof that you don't have to mark every line when sawing, with sufficient practice.

3. An idea as to how quickly you can cut dovetails, so as to give me a benchmark to shoot for in efficiency.

4. Knowledge that using a dovetail jig and a router may not actually be saving as much time as I thought.

Not too bad for a YouTube video.

And even MORE tool cabinet progress

Dominic Greco in Richboro PA

>Hello Everyone,

I finally cut the dovetails for the drawers and glued them up. This only took a month! :>)

While the dovetails were machine cut using my Leigh Dovetail jig, I did make then drawers slightly wider than necessary so that I could plane then to a perfect fit. I finished doing that tonight.

The sides are mahogany and the drawer fronts are ambrosia maple. The top set of drawers are 2 1/2" high, while the bottom set are 3 1/4" high. All of them are about 16 1/4" wide x 10" deep. They have 1/4" thick plywood bottoms.

I still need to cut the grooves for the runners in the drawer sides and then install the runners in the cabinet. After that it's on to the doors! (Is that light I see at the end of the tunnel?)

See ya around,

Dominic

The dovetails won

Dominic Greco in Richboro PA

>Well, about the box joints,......I was on the fence about using them. I figured that since the sides of the cabinet had dovetail splines, why not echo that joinery thoughout the entire cabinet?

I had to stay home yesterday to take delivery of a new clothes dryer and I decided to use the time and used my Leigh Jig to cut through dovetails for the drawers. I also milled up all the wood for the box style doors and used the dovetail jig on them as well. I got nice clean looking dovetails and I'm pretty happy with the results.

However, I have GOT to learn how to cut dovetails by hand! The noise was unbearable, I'm still coughing up dust, and the clean up took too long! After this project is completed, I'm going to be practicing my sawing a parring skills.

See ya around,

Dominic

Proficiency vs. "gadgets"

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.

>The threads below on the Wild West Saw and on the Side Skate made me reflect again on how many products out there exist because 1. savvy marketing make them attractive to buyers, 2. prospective buyers buy them because they don't have the proficiency (real or perceived) to accomplish a given task without "gadget X".

I use the term "gadget" here because I can't think of any other word right now, it is not meant to imply that these products are worthless...

But it seems that in many cases these devices get in the way of learning the "proper" way of doing things (easy, Paul...) Woodworkers buy these devices out of belief that they will allow them either to work faster and/or better, or allow them to undertake tasks they feel are out of their capabilities.

But I think that very often woodworkers opt to use these "gadgets" out of lack of self-confidence, and that decision leads to a "roadblock" in terms of skills development. How often have I read about people using dovetail jigs because they can't see themselves trying by hand. Others who try by hand and get lousy results in the beginning, instead of taking the time to learn to saw straight, go out in search of guide systems for handsaws (many available), or look for the "miracle saw" that will cut straight for them, without developing the "proper" technique and putting in the time required.

While I believe that many of these devices are useful in specific applications (I'd use a DT jig to make the drawers for a kitchen), in many instances they're an impediment to developing skills. I am not adverse to using "gadgets" or power tools, but only if they can accomplish the task better and/or faster.

Last night I dusted off my Steel City mortiser because I have a project on a tight deadline requiring 8 mortises. After an hour or so I had the chisel and bit sharpened, the fence in position, and a few test mortises to make sure everything is right. I did acquire pigstickers not long ago, but haven't had the time to learn the technique, and don't have the time now. But I can't help but wonder how many of these mortises I would have done in the same time it took me to set up the machine... Once I get some practice with them I'll find out...

Enough rambling for now,

DC

Re: Mentoring

Dave Mount

>Hi Bill--

I'd put this under the broad category of "mentoring," recognizing that mentoring doesn't always take the form of someone physically standing there looking over your shoulder. I think it's critical.

About 20 years ago I was at a stage where I had built a few projects (with power tools), but had never made a dovetail joint, and had set my sights on doing that. I had a friend that made furniture professionally, so I decided to milk him for some opinions on what router-based dovetail jig I should buy. He just shrugged and said he didn't have one, he just cut them by hand -- "it's faster anyhow, unless you've got a whole kitchen full of drawers to do," he said. This really set me on my heels -- he could just as well have suggested that I just walk to the moon, it was so far out of my self-perceived realm. In my mind or the time, it was only woodworking savants that cut dovetails by hand. I stewed about that for quite a while, then one night I was between projects and did what most of us here probably did, just took a couple pieces of scrap birch, laid out some dovetails, grabbed a saw, and cut them. Not exactly pretty, but surprisingly serviceable and not actually that difficult (a significant rush). Things got rapidly better with practice, but the point is, the idea that I wasn't (and probably wouldn't ever be) skilled enough to hand cut dovetails was utter nonsense and a completely self imposed limitation.

Those were the days before the Internet explosion, which has been a huge boon in terms of finding out what other folks are doing. I've since moved to northern Minnesota, and I don't know anyone up here that's much into topics like those discussed on this board. As I became interested in hand tool techniques, this and other internet resources were a primary source of the guidance (and inspiration) I needed to get my feet wet (and more). Although I also learned some important things from some books, even the selection of those books as high quality resources came primarily from recommendations from discussion boards.

Another thing that the boards provide is access to some of the more arcane details, things that not enough people do or are interested in to warrant a publisher releasing a book. The idea that I could make a plane, or a marking knife, or a handsaw was not even something I had ever considered until I became aware of what others were doing. And one of the really cool things about the boards is that you not only have access to people who really know what they're talking about, but you also read about the experiences of people who are just learning about something. Relative to your (Bill's) original thesis, I think these posts are incredibly enabling, because it's direct evidence that someone like you can do those things. You can not only get friendly expert advice, but also input from someone that perhaps just learned what you are learning -- and those people sometimes have a different perspective than experts that may have partially forgotten what it was like when they didn't have all the experience they now have. In fact, I'm always concerned that posts of the exquisite work done by some here will discourage others from posting pics and stories from wherever they are on the learning curve. The thing you have to teach may not be the ultimate "how-to" as much as just convincing someone that they should give something a try.

And, of course, the boards give you a chance to show what you're doing to someone less likely to think you're nuts.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that being something of an island up here, the internet is like a lifeline to the larger world of woodworking; I can hardly imagine how much more limited my experience and skills would be if I didn't have it as a source of "mentoring."

Best,

Dave

Re: $10 bills

wilbur

>Pam,

Maybe you're a wood surgeon now? :@) There might be a link between surgeons and woodworker's brains. I almost decided to do surgery in medical school before I went into pediatrics.

All the points you make are good ones. However, one of the benefits of living in a capitalistic society (and here I'm speaking as an ex-Marxist) is that people will find the cheapest and most efficient way to do things. The fact that there aren't more commercial hand tool workshops out there tells me that even though hand tools have the advantages you state in terms of cost issues, those advantages are outweighed by the increased efficiencies gained by power tool use in a commercial environment. Of course, the cost issue would be different for a home workshop.

This is, of course, a completely separate issue from whether hand made furniture is more/less desirable than furniture made from powered methods.

I just remembered a seminar I went to given by Ernie Conover. He was speaking on methods of work, and he said that he dovetails by hand, and mortises by machine, primarily because he found it more efficient to do hand cut dovetails compared to a dovetail jig and a router, but found that the mortising machine and tablesaw tenoning jig was more efficient than cutting the joint by hand. This is pretty much exactly what Frank Klausz said this weekend.

Re: Damn....it's justa DT...

Donald Pierson

>But does Bo know twisted dovetails? Chuckle chuckle. A dovetail joint is an art and a great teacher of using tools and the nature of wood fibers, an expression of one's skill as a craftsman. It is easy to buy a dovetail jig and router bits to make dovetail joints but it is not as rewarding as doing it with handtools. While practice is important trying the methods of others is equally important. I am a noobie to this game and have been trying all manners of cutting DTs. One thing I have learned is stand with you feet north-south to the board when your are cutting so that your forearm and elbow can swing freely while sawing the DTs...something learned from spending time shooting pool...in cold windy Vancouver,WA,USA

Wonder why your dovetails joints don't fit?

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.

>You've labored to get a through dovetail joint together, measuring, marking, sawing, chopping and trimming. You then put the joint together only to find that there are a few gaps here and there. AARRRGGGGHHH! You kick yourself in the rear end at your ineptitude and ask aloud "why can't I make a tight dovetail joint?!!?!?!?!??!"

The answer is easy. It's because the odds are stacked way against you...

WARNING: some math ahead

Let's take a joint with n tails. Each of the pins and the tails need two cuts to define the shape, which gives us 4n as the number of cuts. Then there's the issue of cutting/chopping the baseline in each socket. There are 2n+1 of these (draw one joint to help visualize the whole thing).

Now, each and everyone of these operations can go wrong. Therefore the expectation of the number of bad cuts is equal to:

(6n + 1) * "error rate"

So for a joint with three tails, that gives 19 operations, and if you miss once every 10 cutting or paring operations, you can expect on average to have two nearly bad cuts per joint, and a probablilty of 13.5% of nailing the joint perfectly.

With six tails, the expectation of failed cuts jumps to 3.7 per joint, and the probability of nailing the joint goes down to 2.0%.

I've been working recently on a carcasse that had nine tails at each corner, in this case expectation comes to 5.5 failed cuts and the probablilty of a perfect joint falls to 0.3%.

So if you cut your dovetails without measuring, minimal marking, no trimming and no test-fitting, like Frank Klausz does, give yourself a rousing round of applause if you can put a gap-free joint together!

Take heart, this was the worst case scenario...

In practice, the second part of joint is fitted to the first, and you can mark your joints, test whether the cuts are straight and fix (pare) them if they're not, to make the first part of the joint perfect (which we'll assume here). The number of cuts then falls to (n still being the number of tails in one joint) (4n + 1) (2n + 2n + 1, as I'm still allowing mistakes at the baseline) instead of 6n + 1.

Under this scenario a three tail joint would have 1.3 bad cuts on average and a 25.4% probability of a perfect joint, a six tail joint would rate at 2.5 bad cuts and 7.2% chance of success, and a nine tail joint would be 3.7 misses and 2.0% of nailing it.

With practice you get better at cutting and paring the joints. Let's say that you've progressed to the point where you screw up one cutting or paring operation out of every hundred attempts. Then for three tail you would get a 87.8% probability of a perfect joint, 77.8% for the six tail joint and 68.9% for the nine tails.

Then there's a few "cheats" one can use. Glue will swell up the pins and tails a bit and help hide small gaps. If one leaves the second part of the joint a bit fat, the mating parts will compress together and help hide more gaps (but there's a risk of splitting one of the boards). I don't have a figure for this, but this will help boost the success rate.

BTW, the results are the same whether one does through or half-blind dovetails.

Morale of this story:

- No wonder there are gazillions of dovetail jigs on the market

- Don't be too hard on yourself if a dovetail joint isn't immaculate...

- Practice makes perfect

I believe the math to be accurate, if I screwed up somewhere please let me know...

DC

Re: Answer To Mark's Question *LINK*

Norman (Metcalfe, Ont.)

>Hello Tom,Mark,

I have yet to experiment with the rebate trick, but I use the jig in the link below to keep the tail and pin boards registered correctly for marking purposes. It is easy to put together and gives fairly accurate results. It allows you to focus on marking and transferring markings instead of worrying about keeping the pin and tail boards aligned correclty. Very good registration is necessary when the pins are very narrow, as there is little room for error.

Also, I glued a strip of fine sandpaper under each caul to prevent any possible movement of the boards when paring and chiselling waste out.

Good Luck,

Norman


Dovetail jig

Ya'll make it look easy (subliminal gloat)

Raymond Overman in SC

>I never post over here on the hand tool side but I now have an occasion to. Between my loving wife, her grandmother, and my brother and sister in-law I recieved a Japanese saw, a Lee Valley dovetail jig, a set of seven Lee Valley chisels, and a Stanley block plane for Christmas. This weekend, things finally slowed down enough to afford me a little time in the shop. I've never done much flat work and less still with hand tools but I thought I would try my hand at cutting some dovetails in hopes by next year this time, I could make a nice custom jewelry boxe for my wife.

Needless to say, my first try over the weekend didn't yield an acceptable joint to win any awards. It was tight but had a small gap under one of the tails. Through a little patience and preserverance I think I can get the hang of it though. I look forward to posting pictures once I get a presentable product.

Re: Can someone tell me....

ThomD

>I don't think there is one feature that leads to this, there are a number of claims in the patent. One that does not appear to be violated is the clever way in which the single guide doubles for all four cuts, there are two separate guides in the Rust effort. The Rust jig does use magnets for saw attachement, is clamped to a board edge, and is a joinery/dovetail jig (?). One takes all these features together and it is aledgedly something new.

Re: Yeah, but...

ThomD

>The who did what to whom is not of interest to me. It is not positive for either, that two brands, that I respect, have an issue, whatever that may be.

This issue does jump right into the middle of an area that is of importance. I think that FWW does have a point in saying what is this about if personal use is not at issue? I have learned from this because contrary to one thing (I think) Lee said, we may not have the right of personal use. I always thought we did, broadly, though not commercially. Toolmakers may not want to spit in their client's faces. Just as some rock bands have chosen not to bash downloading. These tools are largely boys toys, and it can readily happen that people buy all of them, and make their own also as seen in a magazine, just to see if one works better. That is often what people really do with this stuff. The most respected voices on this board are tool hounds who buy everything, and people who would like to follow them. I would imagine the number of people making a living with a hand dovetail jig with preset angles is close to zero. So where one takes this stuff is an interesting issue. If it is all a gray mater of property rights and business decisions, my business decision would be to ignore all these flash inventions and get back to practicing the fundamentals.

This is not an industrial activity any longer, and it isn't clear who is really feeding whom in all this. Why did I buy a BU Jointer when I have several other jointers already? I just like to find out what the buzz is about. Every day I have to get my way through a certain amount of pro woodwork, with hand tools, I haven't even taken the BU Jointer out of the box, and I probably will never try out the LV DT jig unless I do more seminars, or use the turning centering jig unless I loose my mind, it's sitting next to my never used version two sharpening jig. So this quarter I squeezed about 500 bucks into LV, (jointer, and some shaves I actually needed). And maybe gave 10 bucks to FWW. Maybe I should stop reading the magazines, and stick to making my own stuff!

(Pic shows a few board loads of never used, or once used LV stuff, that in most cases I probably bought in response to FWW coverage, though I guess not recently. There is lots more stuff I didn't unearth.)

half-blind dovetail SECOND attempt!

frank shic (walnut ck, ca)

>i LOVE this hand tool stuff! i couldn't even cut a half-blind dovetail joint previously with my routers because i was too cheap to shell out the >$100 for a silly dovetail jig!

win - win?

Michael Recchione

>I'm not an attorney, and this isn't legal advice.

(disclaimer mode off now).

I've looked at a lot of patents over the years, mostly to support our IP Law folks in either deciding whether to continue maintaining a particular patent, or in deciding whether we have a good case for asserting one of our patents against a competitor. I've also had to work with our lawyers on applications for my own patents. That still doesn't make me a patent attorney or an expert on patents in general - I'm just familiar with the prevailing style in my industry and my company.

That said, the claims on this patent seem a little strange. We typically write our applications so that the first independent claim is the broadest claim you could make about the invention that would stand on its own, i.e. it should not depend on its own dependent claims in order to be valid. It appears to my (non-lawyer, not offering a legal opinion) eyes that every claim in this patent is dependent on Claim 1, and that Claim 1 itself is so broad that almost any miter box or bench hook (or any number of other devices that read on prior art or are obvious extensions of prior art) would be well described by it.

As I said a couple of times, I'm not a lawyer and this isn't a legal opinion. But it seems like a funny way to write a patent based on what I've seen.

However, I've seen funnier - my own company has (not on purpose), in a few instances, filed and obtained more than one patent on more or less the same invention - different technical teams, different lawyers, maybe different examiners. Essentially, the patent office has shifted responsibility for the patent prosecution process to the courts, which essentially means that the deepest pockets win all the time. It stinks.

Regarding LV and FWW's actions on this thing, one thing that an old boss of mine drummed into my head is that any patent is a good patent until it's successfully challenged. The segment of the patent code that Dan posted a link to states that anyone who encourages others to infringe on a patent is guilty of infringement. So FWW was clearly in trouble with the tip. LV probably doesn't care if you take the trouble to build yourself a dovetail jig with magnets - most people won't go to the trouble, and those that would probably are allergic to buying stuff anyway, so it would be no skin off their nose. And they'd have a real hard time finding out you did it anyway.

But a further tidbit is that failure to assert patent rights can be nullify those rights. If a competitor could show that LV let this tip go unchallenged, they would then be free to infringe at will. At the same time, for the reasons you pointed out, neither LV nor FWW would have wanted to get into a real battle over this, as each depends on the other's good will to some extent. Besides, it's probably not worth it. So the mildly worded retraction was enough for LV to protect its rights from infringement from real competitors while still allowing FWW to save face and not establish a precedent requiring them to do full patent searches on future tips.

So maybe the whole thing worked out for the best after all. I'm glad I practiced and learned to cut dovetails without a jig :-).

Re: FWW/ Lee Valley patent

ThomD

>Thanks, that clears it up. Probably the MOW is in an issue I have.

"Patent law does not allow an individual to manufacture a patented object, even for themselves."

That's news to me. I've heard the contrary said over and over. Need to straighten that wrinkle out.

The dovetail jig is basically a mganetic saw guide, and that's been around for some time.

Re: FWW/ Lee Valley patent

Dean Lapinel

>Patent law does not allow an individual to manufacture a patented object, even for themselves.

My point was that FWW was in error for publishing those plans that were well known to be Lee Valley property by most woodworkers. A simple retraction and apology was all that was necessary. The way it is written though, suggests that LV wouldn't tolerate individuals making there own (for personal use) and I don't believe that they would care.

The object in question was the magnetic dovetail jig that was listed as a "Metrhods of work" tip or contribution.

Now, To clarify, I like FWW (prefer Pop WW) and love LV.

Re: Rob's new router plane?

Ron In Kokomo

>I can think of an application or two that you probably can do faster with the hand router than you can by the time you set up the whirling demon and do the fixturing you'll need to do for accuracy

It also depends a great deal on the scale of the job. For example there are several extremely skilled cabinet mnakers on this site who can dovetail a drawer faster by hand than you an I can get our the router and the dovetail jig and get everything set up and make the joints. That's one drawer.... not eight.

The problem with the two horse screaming devil is that it requires a good bit of set up to make sure that it cuts precisely where you want it to. For some small jobs the hand router is a heck of a lot easier.

It is also much harder to mangle your hand with the hand router :), and I've never heard of a hand routher cutter ciming out and going thru a wall.

My .02

Lyptus wood and dovetails

Roy Girolami

>I have recently gotten 100 bf of lyptus wood to make various projects. The first project will be a small dovetailed chest on a stand, about 18" square and 36" tall. The boards cut well, with slight burning on the end grain and glued up with no difficulty. I did notice some of the boards did not produce shavings when run through the planer. I cut the tails on the top and bottom boards and had no problem. When I started to cut the pins( half-blind) I chopped about 24" and lost the tip of my chisel. This was a 6mm dovetail chisel that I got from Japan Woodworker probably 15 years ago. I wasn't prying, or twisting, just chopping straight down. In order to continue to chop out the dovetails, I dragged out a Stanley chisel from the depths of my tool cabinet. Tonight, I continued to chop and discovered the Stanley was not keeping an edge very well. So it looks like the lyptus wood is very hard on chisel edges. Has anyone done any work with lyptus and is my experience normal? THis is the first time I have seriously considered getting a dovetail jig. Any responses will be appreciated.

Roy Girolami

Apex, NC

If time was money...

Steve Kubien

>A jointer and thickness planer, a compund mitre saw, a pocket hole jig (like a Kreg) and an Akeda dovetail jig would definately be involved.

Steve Kubien

PS...Oh yeah, and a coffee maker and washroom in the shop.