Before I get to making the dovetails for my wife’s dovetail box, I thought I’d make this little template. The design came from the fine folks over at Homestead Heritage, where I was privileged to receive a day of hands-on joinery instruction.
I did modify the design somewhat. The original design has a square on one side and a 1:7 dovetail angle on the other, and is identical on the flipside. Since many woodworkers advocate using a 1:6 ratio for softwoods and a 1:8 ratio for hardwoods, why not have them all represented? So I have a square and a 1:7 on one side, and on the other side I have both 1:6 and 1:8. I think I’m going to follow up with my woodburner and burn those ratios on the appropriate face, just so I don’t have to guess.
I think I will get a lot of use out of this jig, and not just for dovetails. Having a tiny square can be pretty handy sometimes. I know that I have on occasion cursed my huge 12” Starrett square, nice as it may be.
[This entry was taken from my personal website, Adventures in Woodworking.]
EDIT 2/10: This thing only works if you’re a “pins first” guy. If you do tails first, the template only lets you do one side of the tail, and you’d need a bevel gauge to do the other side. If you do pins first, though, the template should be long enough to use from either side of the end.
EDIT 2/13: Wrong again! No matter which side of the end you place the template, the angle is the same. So this template really is kind of useless except for the square. But it’s given me good experience which will help when I build my next one!
-- Eric at http://adventuresinwoodworking.com
8 comments so far
Tomcat1066
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573 posts in 324 days
posted 292 days ago
Sounds like it’ll fit your needs just fine ;)
-- "Give me your poor tools, your tired steel, your huddled masses of rust." Yep, I ripped off the Statue of Liberty. That's how I roll!
rikkor
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8345 posts in 402 days
posted 292 days ago
Where is the Homestead Heritage located? Looks very interesting.
-- Maplewood, MN
Eric
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posted 292 days ago
rikkor: Homestead Heritage is not far from Waco, TX.
-- Eric at http://adventuresinwoodworking.com
Scott Bryan
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9724 posts in 350 days
posted 292 days ago
Thanks for the post. This looks like something I need. I could do a post on “How Not to Cut a Dovetail” but I doubt that would be very informational, but it would be comical (especially to those who have mastered the technique).
-- With God's help all things are possible- even woodworking. Woodworking is not just a hobby, it is an (expletive deleted) expensive hobby.
Mark D.
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79 posts in 296 days
posted 292 days ago
I was playing around with a piece of red oak this weekend teaching myself how to hand cut a dovetail… Something like this would have made the layout 3x faster… I had to swap between the square attachment and variable miter gauge on my combo square(which is 12” long) to mark the dovetail on my 6” piece of oak… can we say, overkill?
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Tom Adamski
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225 posts in 299 days
posted 292 days ago
I don’t know if you all are familiar with this… http://www.blocklayer.com/Woodjoints/DovetailEng.aspx
Helps in the layout of dovetails.
Tom
-- Anybody can become a woodworker, but only a Craftsman can hide his mistakes.
Grumpy
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6517 posts in 379 days
posted 292 days ago
Thanks for sharing Eric. Definitely food for thought.
-- Grumpy - "Always look on the bright side of life"- Monty Python
Eric
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703 posts in 312 days
posted 292 days ago
Tom, that is very cool – thanks for the link!
I plan on posting the steps to making this in the near future, although the more experienced among you can probably figure it out.
-- Eric at http://adventuresinwoodworking.com