Powered fret saw for dovetails?

Re: Dissenting experience

onemanband

Agreed. Handplane masters and belt sander masters are not the same.

Re: Thanks to WoodCentral

onemanband

Woodworking forums serve mostly a social function for me (and pretty much for any woodworkers I know in person). Had I relied on any of the social media or individual poster/youtuber/etc. to develop my skills, I'd have been backward 30 years from where I'm now today.

Books and magazines helped, but nothing compared to building things, making mistakes and learning to avoid them. Trying new techniques and projects expanded my interests and confidence too.

Re: Necessity being the mother of pretension

TomD

"Using a belt sander on a handcut dovetailed drawer is simply a vulgar act. End of story."

Well, only if you could do it, but don't. Otherwise it is just necessity being the mother of pretension.

I don't know that anyone actually does belt sand for drawer fit. Presumably it would be in an environment where the dovetails were cut with routers. Yet for some reason their "industrial" process requires them to miss the fit and mess around to find it.

Re: Thanks to WoodCentral

TomD

And you become the person who can solve problems on your own, because even when you are rediscovering something that was long known, you had to figure it out for yourself. It is very costly, though. If all you want is the end point, it takes a lot to get there.

I certainly have benefited a lot from Youtube and all these forum resources. Having a baseline of craft skills, I appreciate the fact that I can add other skills like metalworking with relative ease. It is also useful to have breakdowns of projects to follow. I am currently tiling the bathroom, and I haven't done that in 10 years. I forget all the products one is supposed to use. So easy to just look it up.

I would be disappointed to think.....

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

....that the detailed posts Derek, Weaver , I and others prepare to teach serve no purpose beyond entertaining. Apparently I am an exception to your rule for I have learned a lot from WC.

Re: Necessity being the mother of pretension

onemanband

It's easy to justify anything on necessity, isn't it? More and more woodworkers choose to add cnc machines to their shops because it's "necessary" to them.

Re: Thanks to WoodCentral

onemanband

The journey of discovery itself has just been as satisfying. Costly? Some interesting hobbies are meant to be that regardless of how we go about them. The badge of "self taught" is not right for everyone.

Re: I would be disappointed to think.....

onemanband

No disappointments necessary. Every visitor to this gorum, or, for that matter, any forums has their reasons or motivation.

Re: Dissenting experience

Charlie

Becksvoort uses belt sanders. Big whoop.

He isn't, and doesn't claim to be, the world's foremost reproducer of Georgian Period antiques.

Here's his prep and finish routine for a plain, Shaker-style chest of drawers, and he starts out with the aforementioned belt sander.

He worked for Thos. Moser in the early years of the firm, and they used sanders. I'm sure they still do.

https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/finishing/finish-recipe-shaker-chest-of-drawers

Re: Dissenting experience

onemanband

Hand tools should best be complemented with the use of a state of the art CNC machine when we build furniture! Exact, precise, efficient and, most importantly....... beautifully HANDMADE.

Re: Competent

onemanband

As a master of handplanes, he still resorts to the use of a belt sander to fit handcut dovetailed drawers?

Those drawers should be made with a leigh dovetail jig (since efficiency is billed as the reason for using the belt sander).

Re: Dissenting experience

TomD

I think he is using them on the face, not to fit them... Anyone know.

I think I heard someone say they had a method where they got all the drawers fitting and flush, and then belt sanded the hell out of the whole face frame and drawers. To take out that last 64th. But not what we are talking about.

Re: Hand made

TomD

Well if we are talking hand made, that is 75% BS for almost all the furniture made in the last 100 years. It was always BS, even hundreds of years ago they had power tools. Exactly what is more hand made about a hand plane than a table saw. The reason newbies (wherever they may be), go all gaga over hand planes is precisely because it is one of the most certain, and simple tools to use that there is. And at this stage of the game the a of teachers are pushing some kind of shooting board, for most of the cuts.

Pye, in one of the classical texts on this distinguishes between the workmanship of risk, and the workmanship of certainty, since hand made is mostly just marketing nonsense. A belt sander is risk, and hand plane is certainty (though not in ever possible use, of which there are about 5), certainly where fitting drawers is the issue.

Re: Competent

TomD

You can believe he fits drawers with a belt sander. Just seemed like standard finishing.

The Leigh came out when the world was still in Krenov's sway. It was designed around a low angle 1-7 dovetail which is not the fashion in traditional work. They may have changed it up, but they had not last time I looked.

Also, if he wants to claim his dovetails are hand cut, he would presumably cut them by hand. However he sands a drawer is another mater.

The Leigh is also not fabulous for half blind, it's breakthrough was as a jig for through dovetails. And it is worse if they are recessed.

Re: Competent

onemanband

My remark about using the leigh jig or "handmade" was just ironic in nature. Just because someone is established and better known doesn't mean every aspect of his trade practice is worth following.

Re: Competent

onemanband

Sarcastic not ironic.

Re: Dissenting experience

Charlie

His stuff always has a healthy allowance around the drawers. He ships his furniture to customers all over the U.S. He lives in Maine. What are you going to do when a customer on the Oregon Coast calls and says that their top left drawer is sticking? Basically, you're standing there on the phone with your d*ck in your hand.

Re: Dissenting experience

Charlie

He's not fitting, he's just cleaning up thumbprints and shop dings.

Re: Dissenting experience

onemanband

Allowing for wood movement is something very basic that every knowledgeable furniture maker must do ---- whether for own use or for sale. I don't know any local custom furniture shop that uses a belt sander to achieve that.

Re: I would be disappointed to think.....

AZ in Colorado Springs

Yeah, there's a lot to be gleaned from these pages are woodcentral. I consider myself to be largely self taught, as well. Woodcentral has taught me much, including"don't be afraid to try something newer," and of course one must not shrink away from practicing a bit to get it right

The how-to stories, and the "here's how I did it" stories are great.

Re: Competent

AZ in Colorado Springs

I cut several sets of HBDTs on the Leigh jig over the last two weeks. They come out great.

Re: Dissenting experience

Charlie

Nobody really gives much of a $hit how superfluous wood is removed. Make yourself happy.

Hand or power, 99.9% of tools used in woodworking are used to remove waste wood up to a line that somebody put on a piece of wood.

Rest assured that those who drone on and on and on about "surface quality" have very little else to offer. I sure wish I'd realized it sooner.

Re: Dissenting experience

Hank Knight

Bill said, "I regard a belt sander as the most difficult machine in my shop to use successfully. It can ruin a piece of furniture with lightning speed."

I consider the router to be in the same category. I can ruin a piece of work faster with a router than any other tool in my shop. I tried clearing the waste from dovetail sockets with a router. I found the stress unacceptable and, like Derek, I missed the intimacy and precision of doing the job with a fret saw and a chisel.

Re: Dissenting experience

TomD

I can't think of any furniture I have ruined with either. Some freehand router work is nerve wracking. I just won't use dusty tools in the shop. I won't even use the table saw in the shop.

Normally people won't choose a chisel or a fret saw, to cut 18 inches off the end of a 3/4" cherry board. But that is exactly what is involved in making a joint in a similarly wide chest. I've been messing around with hand tools for 50 years, it's fun. But if it was production, one would end up living in a van down by the river if one pursued that path. There are no extra point for failing at power tools. No subtractions either.

Re: Competent

TomD

"I cut several sets of HBDTs on the Leigh jig over the last two weeks. They come out great."

Same here, well 25 years ago. So the jig may have changed. Seemed like a bit of a kludge with the little blocks of wood, and it is the fixed angle. There are limits on spacing, and less glue surface due to the rounding.

Some nice antique furniture uses drawers the size of cigar boxes, with 1/4" sides, not even sure if you can do those. Seems unlikely. I have a punch through chisel I copied from the Hedley shop for the light stuff makes the light stuff really fast. And mostly used the Leigh when I first got it to bank out the heavier stuff for family furniture. A couple of desks I made. I was also asked by LV to demo it for one of my dovetail seminars. It is great for production but messing with set up didn't save me much speed in a hobby shop.