Fourth Set of Dovetails

[Justin Green]

Alright, I'm not going to lie... This is my fourth set of dovetails. The first three looked like a rat had been gnawing on them.

White pine is really, really soft, and though my chisels were pretty sharp, paring and chopping out the waste was just nasty. Some of the wood was crushed a little when fitting the joint with my sledge... err.. rubber mallet. You can look at white pine wrong and it dents, splinters, chips, or crushes.

However, now I have a nice block of wood to throw into one side of the vise to keep it from wracking. I think I'm going to make several more sets from the rest of my white pine, then go mangle some poplar. Or maybe balsa. Not sure.

[frank shic]

looks like a great start, justin!

[Jim Koepke]

OK, fess up, tails or pins first?

They look pretty good.

jim

[John Keeton]

Justin, isn't making dovetails both nerve racking and fun??? I really enjoy doing them, but I am just not to the point where I can relax.

Yours are coming along nicely!

I haven't done any pine, and you are right about it being hard to work with. I think you would build your confidence level quicker by using a hard wood for the front and soft for the sides.

Keep up the effort! I have been sidetracked while building a project, but it has 5 drawers, so I will be back at the practice bench soon. Look forward to seeing the rest of your efforts!

[Justin Green]

Tails first for me. Dovetails is pretty good practice because you really have to get your stock flat and square. White pine is easy to square and flatten quickly by planing, which is good. It's a lot of fun. A coping saw makes removing most of the waste quick and painless. I clamped the pieces to the bench with a guide at the shoulder line to guide the chisels when I pared out the rest of the waste and that's a big help, too. White pine doesn't chisel well at all across the end grain with my semi-sharp tools.


I did snag Klausz' video working with hand tools dirt cheap on the bay, so I can't wait to watch that. I realize even better now that my sharpening skills are lacking.

[Eric Hartunian]

If you are doing that well on your 4th try in pine, when you switch to hardwood, you will probably see some very rapid improvements.
A note on chisels and sharpness: I found that when I started using hand tools almost exclusively, my definition of sharpness changed. Pine is a great wood to humble your idea of what sharp is.

Keep at it,
Eric

[Justin Green]

Well, it's very enjoyable. They're not anywhere near as nice as John's latest examples, but one day! Through the four sets of dovetails I have picked up the speed a little bit. Not that I'm hurrying, it just doesn't take as long to think about certain steps, etc. My layout method has improved using a bevel guage, but it's still by eye as far as the spacing goes.

I'm now much faster at making rat-gnawn dovetails than I was after set #1!

[Conrad Fiore]

Aah, and next, the half-blinds.

[Floyd Mah]

You started with a board that was too short. I heard that the correct technique was to start with two boards that were at least four feet long each. Make your dovetail joint, then cut it off. Make another, then cut it off. Repeat until you finally have enough wood for a small box. Then you are an expert. It's irrelevant what type of wood or tools or tail or pin first, it's the length of the boards that you start with.

[Clay Thigpen]

They look good, I haven't tried my hand at them yet but I hope to soon after I get my saws sharp and some halfway decent chisels. I know the trick for figuring out the angle and one trick with a ruler to divide the board but how do you figure out how many pins or tails you'll need and where to place them?:confused:

[Justin Green]

Floyd, that's pretty much what I did. I had a 5 foot board and cut it in half for starters. I just cut off a little more of that joint since I wanted to use it in the vise!

As far as figuring the pin spacing (or tails in this case) I set the bevel and eyed the spot where the half pins would go and just tried to get them even. I didn't measure. At this stage, I'm just trying to get the cuts down. I did use a bevel by this point so that the tails would at least seem symmetrical. If the tails aren't exactly the same size, the pins should still fit (in theory). I will say that had I tried to do more than two tails, I would have had to measure it out more thoroughly.