marking dovetails with chisel instead of knife?

[Chris Friesen]

With the free trial access at FWW online, I read an article that mentioned cutting the tails first (with a Bosch jigsaw, no less) and then clamping the two boards and marking the tails with a mallet and a wide chisel registered against the sides of the tails.

Anyone ever tried this technique? Seems like it might work, and would probably be faster than multiple passes with a marking knife.

[Wilbur Pan]

It should work. You need a marking knife mainly for skinny dovetails because you can't squeeze that chisel in there. ;)

[Robert Rozaieski]

Should work fine as long as the space for your pins is wide enough to get your chisel into. If you like real small pins it won't work as the chisel will likely be too thick.

[Jack Camillo]

Sure it's good. I often mark for joint cuts not only with sharp chisels, but with sharp spare plane blades, which work great when you can hold them flat against the workpiece to be joined to the workpiece to be marked.

[Don Dorn]

Might be interesting to try as an experiment. So far, I cut the pins first so that I have a template for the tails. I do use a bandsaw to cut the tails - I'm not a total neander.