Dovetail Jig Selection

[William C Rogers]

I have been trying to find the best solution at the most reasonable price for a dovetail jig. I have looked on ebay, craiglist to see if a used jig is an option, but all seem to be missing some part. I think my solution is the Leigh 12 in super new. The drawers I am building max is about 10 inches. Is the vacuum attachment worth it as for about the same price I could get the 18 in super without the vacuum. Would it be more important to get the 18 inch? I do have a incra LS and have built 12 in drawers with it, but doesn't seem the best solution as I was always off by a little on the ends lining up due to centering. Looked at the PC4212 deluxe but feel the variable dovetails are important. I may want to build a chest in a couple of years, but the near term is just drawers and may try the incra for a chest as a challenge. Mainly curious if anyone has the super with a vacuum attachment and is it worth it or if the PC at 1/2 the cost is adequate.

[Ralph Boumenot]

Just my 2 cents, but learning to cut them by hand involves only a saw and a couple of chisels. You won't have to worry about vacuums, missing parts, spacing etc.

[Jefferey Scott]

William, I purchased the Porter Cable 4212 jig to do the dovetails for my kitchen cabinet project. I was very dissatisfied with the consistency this jig provided. I spent an entire day trying to dial in the cut but never achieved an acceptable joint. Others may have had better luck with this jig, but this was my experience. I went to my Keller jig and cut all my drawers from it with great success. Hope you find one that works well for you.

[Danny Hamsley]

The benefit of the 18" jig is that you can make something as large as a blanket chest. I have the Leigh DR4 (24") and I love it. It is a high quality tool. I also used it to make the sliding dovetail for the breadboard end on the walnut chest top. Being able to make a long sliding dovetail really increases your capability. You can also attach drawer sides to drawer fronts using the sliding dovetail, and that is a strong joint.

[Tony Joyce]

I have the Super 18 and love it, the vacuum attachment is well worth the money.

Tony

[Carl Beckett]

I have a wider Leigh, that now sets in the corner. My recommendation is to just practice a small amount and cut them by hand.

A while back I picked up a wood rat off CL. This is by far the fastest method I have tried: pins cut on the wood rat which also quickly removes all the waste ( and digital readout makes a drawer about a 3min task). Then transferred and tails chopped by hand. ( I got lucky to pick this up at low cost so understand it might not be a valid option for you)

[Troy Turner]

William -

I have the 4212 and really enjoyed making scraps. I haven't used it for a real project yet, but it was on sale so I grabbed it. Set up was easy, but, if you're looking for variable, this may not be the one for you. The instructions are pretty adament about making sure the widths of your stock on in 1/4" increments. Once I read the directions, they DTs came out really nice.

Good luck with your choice.

[Prashun Patel]

DT jigs are something that come up on the after market a LOT. The reason is that many people overestimate the number of times they'll be doing them. If yr an occasional dt-er, then you should look at the Keller style jigs (Leigh even makes one). I have an el cheapo from MLCS and even it works very well. It's not designed to be fast; but it is accurate. The nice thing about that style jig too is that yr not size limited; you can also do irregular spacing.

[Stew Hagerty]

I have an Incra router table with their "Super System". It makes wonderful dovetails (when I don't cut them by hand), box joints, and many types of fancy dovetails. Not to mention, with it's 1/32" precision, that it is amazing at all manner of routing setups.

[Paul Murphy]

Folks are right to point out that you can of course cut dovetails by hand. If you are doing a full kitchen cabinet project, you may not find the hand-cut dovetail drawer time requirement to be acceptable when compared to the time it takes you to cut dovetails with a jig. If you are cutting dovetails for one chest of drawers, the time tradeoff is not so large, but the cost factor is.

To really answer your question you have to also look at the different ways dovetail jigs work, and then you have to decide what tradeoffs you are willing to accept in the name of cost/versatility.

Jigs like Leigh use router mounted bushings to guide the bit, and if the bushing is not perfectly centered around the bit you will bias the joint.

Jigs like Keller use bearing guided bits, so router concentricity concerns are eliminated.

All the jigs still require both work-pieces be referenced to the same common point, otherwise the joint will shift and your edges aren’t flush.

The best people to comment on a particular jig are owners of that jig who have experience with their points of potential error and limitations.

Now you can get into capability/cost tradeoffs:
The Leigh jig has been out for quite a while now, and they have improved it over the years and come up with quite a few handy accessories. I can comment on the Leigh because I’ve owned one for well over 15 years. Because they have been sold in large numbers, it is possible to find an attractive deal on a used Leigh jig. You asked about the Leigh vacuum attachment, and I can tell you it works well and was worth the price for me. As the Leigh jig uses guide bushings, you’ll want a router that can have the bushing accurately centered and maintain that accurate center during the depth adjustment necessary to the test cuts that are a part of fine tuning the fit of your dovetail joint.
I have the 24” Leigh jig, and some things I like are joint spacing of my choice, cuts through, half-blind, and sliding dovetails up to the case width I’m likely to ever build, good instruction manual, and good customer support. Some of the things I don’t like are router concentricity requirements (and Leigh seems to avoid mentioning this issue in their manual), and the reality of using the jig is that you really need to read the manual to use the jig…it is not quite the intuitive device to use that the sales pitch infers. There is a learning curve to using the Leigh jig (as I expect there is for any of the jigs).

So there you have some of the tradeoffs and capabilities to consider, and the right answer will depend on your current and future projects. It sounds like you could use a 12” jig for drawers in quantity, and hand-cut dovetails for that 20” deep case for the chest of drawers (or whatever the project) you will build when you have the time for that project. Choices ;).

[Charles Lent]

If you are just getting into dovetailing with a router and a dovetail jig here are a few things that no one ever tells you before you make your first dovetail jig purchase. Making good dovetails with a dovetail jig requires a precise multi-step process, and each cut will need to precisely match it's mating cut on the adjoining piece or both pieces will likely be trash. Accurate set ups and careful cuts are absolutely required. There is almost no room for error. The more steps or setups in the process, the more chances there are for something to go wrong.

A significant reason for buying a wide dovetail jig like the Leigh D4R (which I have) over a shorter jig is that you can set up for both the right and left drawer side cuts at the same time for drawers up to 12" high. With any variable spaced jig like the Leigh and Porter Cable jigs this is a good justification for buying a wider jig even if you never make blanket chests. You can do drawer sides with a shorter jig, but you will need to set up and cut all the pieces for one side of the drawers, then change the setup to do the other side. If you need the first set up again it will be very difficult to exactly duplicate it (to replace a drawer side that was destroyed in a later step, etc.). With a shorter jig You will find yourself making spare drawer sides to keep from having to do this.

When using a dovetail jig you will also soon discover that having 2 routers, one set up with the dovetail bit and the other set up with the straight bit, is a great advantage. Getting the bit depth set exactly right for blind dovetails will not be something that you will want to repeat midway through the job. You don't need big routers, a 1 hp fixed base router will do if it's depth adjustment and lock is good. It needs to be light in weight too, because you will be lifting it onto and off of the jig several times for each joint. A plunge router does not work out well and I do not recommended it for use with a dovetail jig. I prefer the D handle bases and soft start for my dovetailing routers, but the standard fixed base and hard start routers will work fine.

To avoid problems that are caused by router bit / guide bushing mis-alignment always cut your dovetails with the router held in the same orientation. I drew an arrow on the top side of the base of each of my routers to make certain that I always orient the router the same to cut dovetails. The arrow must always point toward the dovetail jig.

You can do without a vacuum / support system if your budget is tight, but you will soon wish you had it if you have many dovetails to cut. The chips are thrown straight out of the front of the jig, and they will collect on the front of you if not collected by a vacuum system on the jig.

When you are new to dovetailing with a router and considering the purchase of your first dovetail jig none of these points are obvious, so it would seem that buying a shorter jig without the vacuum system would financially be a good decision. In my opinion it is not. Sure, you can do dovetails with a small dovetail jig and only one router, but repeated setups will consume an excessive amount of your time, add to your chances of making an error, and you will quickly wish that you had bought the larger jig. As for chip collection, I guess it depends on how messy you are willing to get.

Charley

[Tom Matthews]

A significant reason for buying a wide dovetail jig like the Leigh D4R (which I have) over a shorter jig is that you can set up for both the right and left drawer side cuts at the same time for drawers up to 12" high. With any variable spaced jig like the Leigh and Porter Cable jigs this is a good justification for buying a wider jig even if you never make blanket chests. You can do drawer sides with a shorter jig, but you will need to set up and cut all the pieces for one side of the drawers, then change the setup to do the other side. If you need the first set up again it will be very difficult to exactly duplicate it (to replace a drawer side that was destroyed in a later step, etc.). With a shorter jig You will find yourself making spare drawer sides to keep from having to do this.
CharleyI've never had to do this (cut one end of all the drawer pieces, change the jig, and cut the other end) with my D4R. I believe the only time you need to do that is if you want perfectly symmetrical joints. The Leigh manual has you cutting the pins/tails first, then flipping the jig and cutting the pins/tails (I can't remember the exact order since it's been a couple months since I used mine). The only setup change I do between pins/tails is to flip the guide and change the dovetail bit (more on that later). If I screw up a part (usually because I have the board facing the wrong direction), I just have to flip it back and change the bit. After you do this a couple of times, you learn to pay better attention to how you've got the boards clamped in the jig.

Charley is right though, you can set up each half of the jig for stuff like that, which is one advantage of a 24 inch jig. He's also right about two routers making it even easier. At the very least, get yourself a centering tool (my Milwaukee routers both came with one) so you can get the base plate exactly concentric with the router collet.

I like my D4R - it was pricey, but it feels like a quality product. The VRS is awesome, it catches everything.

Leigh has a free video you can order (probably watch online too) - it will go through all the operations you can do with their jigs. It helped my buying decision significantly.

[Paul Murphy]

Charley raised some valid points, and he's right about none of them being obvious at first. This reminded me that you can download the users manual from Leigh, and it might by worth reviewing procedures for your current intended use of a dovetail jig. That might highlight some of the tradeoffs your intended use would impose on any of the Leigh jigs you are considering. The wide jig/narrow board dovetail comment has to do mostly with the symmetry of layout...if you need to have a joint that isn't symmetrical, it is easier to "mirror" the finger layout on the wide jig, and then as Charley said you can cut a replacement piece if needed because your setup never had to be altered just to cut the other end of the board.

[Jim Rimmer]

You've gotten some really good guidance here already. Charles Lent makes some very good points. I started with a cheapo Craftsman jig that had severe limitations (bu it was cheap). The I bought the Rockler jig but that was before I discovered SMC and probably would not have bought it had I gotten some advice here. However, it is a good jig and if you only make boxes, it's fine. Limited in size and spacing. After that I bought a used Leigh jig and gained size and spacing variability and am very happy with it.

Good luck on your choice and your project. Lots of things to consider here. I second the motion on multiple routers. I have 3 Porter Cable 690s dedicated to my jig for blind and through DTs.

[Danny Hamsley]

The nice thing about the Leigh DR4 is that you use the same bit for the pins and tails for a half-blind dovetail like when you are making overlay drawers, say for a chest of drawers, table drawers, cabinet drawers, etc.

[William C Rogers]

Wow. The advice was a lot of things I didn't know, especially the concentricity requirement of the bushing. Thank you all. Most recommend the larger Leigh jig and the vacuum attachment. The router I have is a Freud 1702 which I haven't used very much. I haven't bought the adapter plate yes, so I am not sure how well it will hold centering. For now I am going to keep checking CL and ebay for a deal on a larger jig as my need is about 4 weeks away. I think I have about 22 to make. Maybe the incra LS system is not all that troublesome. Main things are finding the center, depth of cut, and clamping the boards square. I did make 14 drawers with it getting better, but it is a challenge to some extent.
Again, thanks for all to good feedback.

[Charles Lent]

My previous reply suggested marking the top your router base with an arrow and then always pointing this arrow toward the jig when cutting the dovetails. If you do this you won't have to worry about the bushing being concentric as long as you don't change any router adjustments in the middle of your job. It doesn't matter if the bushing isn't concentric with the bit as long as you always keep the router oriented the same. If you orient the router differently and the bushing and bit are not concentric you will be adding and subtracting the error each time you pick up the router to make a cut. If the error is always the same and is always in the same direction it won't affect the joint. Mark the router base with an arrow, always point the arrow toward the jig, and any offsets between the bushing and the bit will always be the same amount and in the same direction. It's important to make absolutely certain that the bushing stays in the exact same place in the router base. The bushing needs to fit snugly in the router base hole and the nut on the top of the bushing needs to stay tight. If it loosens and the bushing moves or rotates you can have major problems. I now use a special wave washer that I purchased from Peachtree Woodworking to keep the bushing nut from loosening.

If you are making many dovetail joints on many drawers you will be lifting the router on and off of the jig many times. The weight of the router can become a major issue very quickly. Since a big powerful router isn't necessary for making dovetails a smaller lightweight router is what you should be looking for, but a heavy router can be used if it's all that you've got. Your arms will just grow tired sooner. I have no idea what your Freud router weighs so you will need to determine if there is a weight issue after you have made some dovetail joints with it.

Charley