Originally Posted by
Joel Gelman
I am fairly certain that Mr. Becksvoort would tell you that efficiency is important when you are making a living at custom furniture building.
When I have made dovetail drawers, using a Keller jig for through dovetails, I always allowed at least 1/32 extra if not a bit more, then use a random orbit sander to sand the pins-tails flush. I allowed this extra to avoid being a hair short and then having to sand the drawer side to achieve a flush fit. When I do this, I find myself using 80 grit to start, and then I have to progress up to 400. It is not like I just run the sander with 1 grit of paper and I am done. Any extra pressure at the edge or tilt, and a roundover which looks awful.
I thought one reward for addressing my woodworking weakness of not using planes and chisels and other hand tools enough was that with skill and quality sharpening hand tools I would save time and have a better result by using hand tools to over sanders for this task. That is why I found it interesting when I watched this video of the hand cut dovetails followed by the belt sander.