Derek - Bill dovetail challenge

Misinterpreted your response- questions

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I thought you were offering a possible untested suggestion, not one you employed. I'm all for saving time, and I clearly don't understand your details or it would have been obvious how it saves time. So, will you reveal how you employ the router to route both socket length and depth? Actually describe the whole process- what is routed and what is chiseled, bit size, what order and what jigs if any employed.

Presumably you route the socket length as I do with a router set to the tail length. Is this jig routing or free hand? The hard part is what Derek does which involves solving the problem of teetering the router on the end of the drawer (or whatever), again with router set to make the depth spot on. If the teetering support issue is readily solved and two routers set to depth are employed I see a time saver. But how to efficiently solve routing on a multiple drawer ends remains elusive?

CNC

Re: Misinterpreted your response- questions

Brian Holcombe

I'm working with 12/4" x 16" x 9' ash today, so I'm taking a break from flipping these boards around to give my back a rest.

I do this with a router table after making saw cuts by hand.

I set a depth stop, then set the fence, cut to depth. Then I move the fence and repeat that until the job is complete. I avoid climbing so I start on the right side and move the board to the right until it's done. I usually have a stack of material and just keep swapping boards until they're all done. It would be time consuming to do this approach for one board but I fly through them when there is a bunch to do.

After this is complete I set the fence so that the router bit is cutting to the same depth as my drawer sides are thick. I then set stops for each tail so I dont cut too far and cut.

All set and ready to complete by chiseling.

I doubt either of you are going to employ this method, but you asked me directly how I do it.

I can't afford the time to go into detail, so if you are still confused then think it through at your router table and try out a few ways to do it if you are interested to employ my method.

This method is extremely fast and reliable and I produce air tight joints with it, feel free to employ or dismiss.

Some clarification

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

The hard part is what Derek does which involves solving the problem of teetering the router on the end of the drawer (or whatever), again with router set to make the depth spot on. If the teetering support issue is readily solved and two routers set to depth are employed I see a time saver. But how to efficiently solve routing on a multiple drawer ends remains elusive?

Bill, Brian describes the same procedure as I use for setting up and routing the orientation I reported on.

What appears to be causing you pause is that I used a wooden clamp to hold the drawer end, and that this appears unstable.

Recall that I have mentioned on a few occasions that the drawer faces in my example are parallelograms, and not square. If they were square, there would be no difficulty in clamping them a different way. In this instance, they need to be held at an angle to create a coplanar registration surface around the edges for the router to ride on. The wooden clamp enables this.

Obviously, it is not about speed of set up for you (as mentioned, this took 45 seconds), but stability for the router.

Now if the ends were square, it would be a simple matter to just clamp the board against the side of the bench. With a wide sub-base for the router, there would be plenty of registration to support the router to work on the edge.

I suspect that Brian goes from one set up to another. His boards are square and he maintains constant measurements. I would do exactly the same in his circumstances. Indeed, there is an element of this in the 8 drawers I have done: all the tails are the same spacing and the same vertical length (15mm). All the pin boards are marked to fit this sizing after the ends are prepared for the angled dovetailing. The depth of cut is a standard/fixed 1/4" setting for all. Brian would simply use more than a single router (or equivalent).

Regards from Perth

Derek