Dovetails

[Keith Christopher]

A pic of some hand cut dovetails I'm doing for a hanging tool chest for my hand tools. Sorry for the clarity I won't have my digital camera back until my daughter gets back so this is from my phone.

[Jim Koepke]

A pic of some hand cut dovetails I'm doing for a hanging tool chest for my hand tool.

Nice looking wood, but all that for just one hand tool?:p

jim

[Keith Christopher]

Nice looking wood, but all that for just one hand tool?:p

jim


Heh yeah I didn't pick up on that typo. :) To clean these up would you recommend a smoother ?

[Roger Myers]

Keith,
A little hard to tell from the picture, but from the shadows it looks like your pins are below the surface of the tails... meaning you have to reduce the thickness of the entire tail board.... yes, for that you might use a smoother... but it looks like you have a fair amount to remove.
You really want to shoot to have the pins a bit longer i.e., protruding past the tail a few thous'... then you take your sharp low angle block plane and bring them to the surface of the tails... a lot less work.
Roger

[Keith Christopher]

Keith,
A little hard to tell from the picture, but from the shadows it looks like your pins are below the surface of the tails... meaning you have to reduce the thickness of the entire tail board.... yes, for that you might use a smoother... but it looks like you have a fair amount to remove.
You really want to shoot to have the pins a bit longer i.e., protruding past the tail a few thous'... then you take your sharp low angle block plane and bring them to the surface of the tails... a lot less work.
Roger

Roger,

yeah the came out a little more proud than I expected, I laid it out with my marking gaugeto the thickness of the tails but the're proud about a 16th. I might just take them down with some 80 grit until they're almost flush and plane them smooth. I was curious which plane is usually used for knocking them flush.

Keith

[Sean Hughto]

It's the pins that are proud, right? If so, use a chisel to get rid of most, and then take a few final clean-up swipes with a plane.

[John Keeton]

Sean, I believe it is the tails that are proud. Can you not rescribe the pin board and take the tails a little deeper to get them flush?

[Keith Christopher]

Sean, I believe it is the tails that are proud. Can you not rescribe the pin board and take the tails a little deeper to get them flush?

Yeah the pins are proud.

[John Keeton]

Then I would use the low angle block, but stay away from the sandpaper!

[Keith Christopher]

Then I would use the low angle block, but stay away from the sandpaper!


Why stay away from sandpaper ?

[Sean Hughto]

A chisel is fullproof. register the back of a wide chisel on the tail board and then swing the chisel through an arc in that plane allowing the corner of the chisel to slice away a bit of a proud pin at a time. Always work in from the edge to prevent breakout.

[Rick Erickson]

Any bench plane will knock them down. A chisel takes too long (at least for me). A bench plane makes very quick work of it (1 minute or so) assuming it is sharp.

[Sean Hughto]

I'm not sayign that a bench plane won't work. As you want to plane in from the edge to prevent tearout, the problem witha plane sometimes is that it produces tearout on your tail board - especially when set rank enough to take those extra proud pins down in a reasonable time. I couldn't chisel 'em down in one minute, but definitely three to five. I'm in no hurry on these things.

[Keith Christopher]

Pared away the pins then block planed smooth. The tails are VERY slightly proud (looks larger than in the photo). Thanks for the advice. :)