Chris Livingston
03-12-2005, 11:19 PM
I’ve had my Leigh D4 Dovetail jig for about 2 years and have been fairly happy with it but for the last three days I have been banging my head against the wall trying to do some simple half-blind dovetails for 2 drawers.
The fronts are 55/64th and the sides are 11/64th (yeah I know funny dimensions but I wanted to keep them as thick as I could). I started by using the 101 cutter set at 5/8th but the joint was too loose so I lowered it a bit. The problem is at just over 5/8th the cutter is buried below the edge of the wood and makes it really tough to cut using the shaft so I switched to the 80 bit. Again at ¾ the joint was too loose so I lowered it bit by bit until the joint was tight but there was only about 1/16th left from the front of the board.
I then tried switching to the ½” shank 90 and 100 but the fit was loose no mater what depth I went to. I thought it was my old PC 690 router and the base I could never quite center so I bought the new Dewalt 618 series router with the 3 bases as well as the actual Leigh “precision” guide bushings to no avail.
Thinking back I have never been able to set up the fingers for half-blind routing and just flip them over and get a perfect fit. One time I had to re-set them all closer together in order to get the sockets to fit the tails I had cut.
What am I doing wrong? I am not a moron when it comes to this kind of thing but I’m beginning to feel like one.
Any help is appreciated.
Chris
The fronts are 55/64th and the sides are 11/64th (yeah I know funny dimensions but I wanted to keep them as thick as I could). I started by using the 101 cutter set at 5/8th but the joint was too loose so I lowered it a bit. The problem is at just over 5/8th the cutter is buried below the edge of the wood and makes it really tough to cut using the shaft so I switched to the 80 bit. Again at ¾ the joint was too loose so I lowered it bit by bit until the joint was tight but there was only about 1/16th left from the front of the board.
I then tried switching to the ½” shank 90 and 100 but the fit was loose no mater what depth I went to. I thought it was my old PC 690 router and the base I could never quite center so I bought the new Dewalt 618 series router with the 3 bases as well as the actual Leigh “precision” guide bushings to no avail.
Thinking back I have never been able to set up the fingers for half-blind routing and just flip them over and get a perfect fit. One time I had to re-set them all closer together in order to get the sockets to fit the tails I had cut.
What am I doing wrong? I am not a moron when it comes to this kind of thing but I’m beginning to feel like one.
Any help is appreciated.
Chris