The generosity and support of the Creek allowed me to experiment with the three best-known dovetail saw guides. I thought it might be helpful to share my thoughts after making multiple dovetails with each of the guides.
By way of context, I am a hobbyist woodworker with a well-equipped shop. I enjoy using quality tools and have both power and hand tools. I enjoy using hand tools, but started out with power tools and haven’t been able to totally shake that habit. Over the years a wide variety of projects have emerged from my shop ranging from small boxes and a judge’s mallet, a step stool, a china cabinet, and a storm and screen door. If I ever made the same thing twice, I might actually get good at it.
The three guides I received (special thanks to Tim and Phil) were the Katz Moses, David Barron, the Lee Valley.
Each of them accomplishes the same thing, guiding a dovetail saw for cutting both tails and pins, and all three use rare-earth magnets to hold the saw against the guide's face.
The Veritas guide is a solid example of Lee Valley’s quality tools and well-written documentation. It is made of anodized aluminum and uses a layer of low-friction UHMW plastic to facilitate the saw sliding against the guide face. Its unique feature is a clamp that tightens the guide onto the board ensuring it doesn’t move during sawing. That might be a good thing for those with limited hand strength, but it also adds two extra steps to each cut.
The clamping mechanism is attached to the guide by a second screw. The mechanism must be removed and repositioned when changing from tail cuts to pin cuts. There are no markings on the guide to indicate how to position the clamp for the two types of cuts. It isn’t too difficult to see which setup is which once you are familiar with each type of cut, but for a newbie or someone in a hurry, the possibility of a mistake is inherent in the design.
Because of the height of the guiding face, my Dozuki could only cut down about 3/8” before the saw back came to rest on the top of the guide. Removing the guide allows the kerf to guide the saw the remainder of the way, but first, you have to remove the saw to unclamp the guide. That’s another diversion from just making a cut.
The David Barron guide is made of a single piece of aluminum. It is positioned one way to make tail cuts and flipped 180 degrees to cut pins. There are no indications on the guide to tell you which is which other than Barron’s name being readable for cutting tails or upside down for pin cuts. The guide is basic in design, sits firmly on the wood, and easy to use. It comes with fine sandpaper faces that help to keep the guide from moving when placed on the wood. It feels elegant compared to the other two guides.
Katz Moses has cast his guide in clear urethane. It definitely looks cool. What is more important is that it goes one step further than the other two by offering a guide face for the 90-degree crosscuts for half pins. This guide actually offers four faces: one for tails, one for 90-degree cuts, and two pin faces.
I found his guide to be the most difficult to keep in place for two reasons. First, the urethane material is naturally slippery. A second reason is caused by the design of the guide. It has the narrowest contact surface of all the guides. By this, I mean not the face that holds the saw, but the face that is against the wood. You could add sandpaper but that would not change the relatively narrow width of the face.
The urethane body of the guide seems to move easily if not held very firmly in place.
Both the Veritas and the Barron guides use a large (~3/4”) rare earth magnet to help the user keep the saw aligned with the guide face. Katz Moses uses two small (~5/16”) magnets. K-M suggests that his pair of magnets is more effective than the one large magnet. I’m not certain that this is true. Neither configuration will overcome sloppy sawing form, and my totally unscientific test of the strength of the three magnet setups showed the K-M dual magnets to have significantly less holding power than the single magnets used by LV and DB.
All of these guides will be helpful to a novice dovetail maker, but if you think that your struggle to produce perfect joints is over, you will be sorely disappointed. You still need to focus on marking carefully; developing good sawing form; cutting on the right side of the line, and then learning the skill needed to remove the waste and only the waste.
For me the choice of which guide to use in the future was easy. The Veritas guide slowed me down. Katz-Moses was more hype than added utility. The Barron guide was a simple, easy-to-use tool that did what I needed. Thanks to everyone who supported my experiment. I will be passing on the Veritas guide to Matt and returning the KM guide to Phil. Tight dovetails here I come.
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