How to hold tail board in place while marking pin board?

[Dave Parkis]

So you have to cut accurate dovetails to build a jig that helps in alignment to cut accurate dovetails? I feel dizzy

Well, the dovetails have to be functional, but not pretty

[David Eisenhauer]

Derek - Am I remembering correctly that you have a photo somewhere of your use of some type of square (shop made?) that aligns the sides and ends of through dovetails on equal sized drawer components? Or was it someone else?

[Prashun Patel]

I rabbet the inside of my tail boards. This allows you to register well enough that you don’t need to clamp at all.

I run them vertically on the table saw as the very first step in the process. That shoulder assists with cutting and paring the tails.

[Sam Stephens]

not sure i understand why this is so complicated? I use a moxon vise like Derek's (except it's not nearly as nice) mainly b/c it's higher up than my bench vise, but the bench vise will do. Alignment between the tail and pin boards is done with my fingers. no square needed. lightly mark the pin board with a fine mechanical pencil. If the tail board is shifting, you're trying too hard. remove the tail board and re-scribe the lines a bit darker using one of the angle things or DT jig or something for the straight line. Not really sure why all the extra effort for rabbets and what not.

[Derek Cohen]

Derek - Am I remembering correctly that you have a photo somewhere of your use of some type of square (shop made?) that aligns the sides and ends of through dovetails on equal sized drawer components? Or was it someone else?

I did post a picture of a square I made to align the ends of boards which are unequal:

In the first setting, it is used to align a half-blind dovetailed drawer front which will have a section saw away (the drawer front is to be bowed)...





In the second example, it is used to align the drawer back, where the drawer is a different width ...








The easiest and quickest method generally is to simply use a wide, long chisel ...



Regards from Perth

Derek

[Jim Koepke]

Derek - Am I remembering correctly that you have a photo somewhere of your use of some type of square (shop made?) that aligns the sides and ends of through dovetails on equal sized drawer components? Or was it someone else?

If it looked like this:

Joint Alignment Inside Square.jpg

it might have been mine.

The clamp on straight edge mentioned in an earlier post is easier to use. Though if you try as many different ways as you read about, you may find a different way may work better for you than it does for someone else.

not sure i understand why this is so complicated?

Complicated is as complicated does? It isn't that making dovetails is complex, it is kind of like learning to drive. Back in my day one even had to learn how to shift gears and use a clutch without smoking it. Dovetailing like driving has steps to be followed. Also dovetailing is like driving since a lapse of attention can cause a problem.

jtk

[Derek Cohen]

Great minds think alike, Jim ......

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Patrick Chase]

Then there was something in a Schwarz post or Youtube video that showed a trick of clamping a straight piece of wood along the baseline of the tails. It amazed me how well this simple trick worked to keep the tail board square to the pin board.

I've used this method in the past and it works very well. I mostly align by eye now and then keep the tail board in place with a holdfast, but either way the key thing to realize is that you need to align the baseline of the tails with the face of the pin board that will go on the inside of the joint. The "140 trick" (rabbetting as Kevin Smirna suggested) accomplishes that. So does Jim's method.

They key to getting good alignment by eye is to clean the waste exactly to the baseline, with crisp corners.

I see some beginners trying to align the tops of the tails of through DTs with the outside face of the pin board (obviously you can't do that at all for blinds), and that seems to invariably lead to trouble, because it only works if the tail height is exactly the same as the pin board's thickness.

[David Eisenhauer]

I have a steel square that is sized and configured just right that I use to line things up. I saw David Barron's alignment gizmo, but have never taken the time to put one together. I learned about the shallow rabbet to help with alignment back in the 1980's, but forgot about the trick sometime several years ago as I fell off into power tool/machinery use for a number of years.

[steven c newman]

Hmmm, through dovetails..I usually do pins first...much easier to mark out the tails

1/2 blind ones...tails first. The reason for the corner clamp is I wanted an extra hand in holding the boards still, long enough to mark out the pins, something quick, easy to use, yet rock solid when holding things in place....without a lot of special set ups, extra woodworking, just a set & forget. The old corner clamps seem to fit the bill...I can clamp to one board, slide the other into place, a few turns of the crank, and it is ready to go.....when done, easy to just set aside on a hook somewhere..KISS.

YMMV....

[James Waldron]

I rabbet the inside of my tail boards. This allows you to register well enough that you don’t need to clamp at all.

I run them vertically on the table saw as the very first step in the process. That shoulder assists with cutting and paring the tails.

Wait ... What? You have a 140 table saw? Is that a Neander table saw? Hmmmmm!

[Patrick Chase]

Wait ... What? You have a 140 table saw? Is that a Neander table saw? Hmmmmm!

Apparently he's joined Brian in the Electric Cult (or maybe it's the Cult's "Electric", I can never keep this stuff straight).

[James Waldron]

Apparently he's joined Brian in the Electric Cult (or maybe it's the Cult's "Electric", I can never keep this stuff straight).

You mean he's grown a tail? How awful!