Compound Angle Dovetails

[Chris Hedges]

Cut my first set last night and they turned out pretty good. Watched the Chopperoos video on youtube, looked at Tom Caspers article, and read Tage's section in his book on joinery. Only thing i dont like about all of the is the imprecise nature of the layout and the fact that the pins are cut first. Is there any reference material for laying these our tail first that includes a reference chart for various angled sides?

Chris

[Chris Hedges]

crickets...

[Carl Beckett]

Well Chris, if you dont get some inputs from this community then it means you are leading the pack and will have to step up and write the tutorial.

[Jim Neeley]

Sounds like a call for a photo-tutorial for the rest of us to me! :)

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I say pics or didn't happen! (Just picking, sorry)

Sounds like you've gotten all the info I found when I was looking at these, although I haven't gotten around to working on them. The chopperoos video, however silly, was helpful. I haven't seen Tom Caspers article, I'll have to look for that.

Tommy Mac did a compound-angle box a while back; I think it was just finger joints, or maybe it was butts and rabbets, I don't remember - and it was table saw oriented - but the thing he did was make a sort of set up block - basically he took a big block of wood and used the tablesaw to cut the angles he wanted on that block, so he had a sort of solid, truncated pyramid version of the finished box - maybe it was smaller, I don't remember. He could then use that to set the saw to cut all the pieces. It seems like making some small solid blocks like that is probably the easiest way to take your measurements from, rather than relying on a table or something.

[lowell holmes]

Roy Underhill's book, The Woodright's Apprentice, has a chapter about making a Seaman's chest. He shows how to make them (compound dovetails) in that chapter.

I tried it without much success.

[Mike Siemsen]

I just finished a sea chest with the ends angled and the front and rear cut square. These are not tough dovetails to cut but I was more careful with the layout then I usually am. When I cut regular dovetails I don't do much layout past a base line and a couple of tic marks for spacing. I did through dovetails with the pins on the end boards so the ends don't pull off when you pull on the handles(becketts). You always want the sides of your pins to be parallel to the edges of your board. This is how I teach students to tell pins from tails, pins are parallel. You scribe your baseline off of the end of your board as you always do, it is just that the end is at an angle now. Lay out your pins in the same manner that you always do, saw and chop the waste(you may want to use a bevel to keep the sides of the pins parallel to the edges). Lay out the base line for the tails off the end of the board, this could be angled too if you wanted, and mark the location of your pins as usual, you will use the same bevel angle as you did for the pins, you know the andgle because it is the same angle as the end of the board, there are no calculations, just grab some scrap and make a few. 230649230674230675230676

[mike holden]

Not quite what you are looking for, but this is the clearest description of how to do compound angle dovetails that I know of. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOzogWSNblg
Chad gave a presentation at our last SAPFM meeting and it was terrific.
Mike