Dovetail jig

[Ellsworth Jenkins]

Recently I bought a Chestmate dovetail jig at a wood workers convention and I think I got a raw deal. The router can tilt a bit on the jig and indicating that the plane of the jig is not machined very well and the first joint that I put together does not look too good. Has any body used one of these and had any good finished looking dovetail joint? There are a lot of variables I had to deal with in the set up to cut just one dovetail. So far I am not to impressed. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give it about a 2. I may be missing something but so far it is a waste of money.

[David Moody]

Unfortunately, this jig has more than a couple of problems in its design. I have one and it is kind of a mess to work with. You are almost better off hand cutting your pins and tails.

I was able to make a simple box using this jig, but the tolerances weren't very good. Setting up a simple joint requires an involved effort. I did several test cuts to try and tighten it up, but was continually getting mixed results.

I realize that there was some operator error in this, but, to a certain extent, a good jig should help guide you out of the most common errors and not introduce a whole slew of new ones (which this does).

There are a lot of better solutions out there if you are looking for a dovetail jig. On the other hand, using this may force you back to hand cutting dovetails, which isn't a bad thing.