Dove Tails

that depends – are you looking for handcut dovetails ? or looking for machined dovetails?

the former takes practice, the more practice, the better it’ll look, Gary Rogowski from FWW had an article suggesting to use scrap pieces of wood in the shop to make a 1 tail dovetail joint freehand, no measurements, just go at it – the more you do it, the better you’ll get. there are some good articles on dovetails on FWW, youtube, and google is your friend.

if it’s the later – it depends on how you’d like to machine it, and how much money can you spend on it (dovetail jig for router? other…) those also take some practice, but once you learn the machine, it become more repetitive and faster if you need to make a large set of dovetails.

-- When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

Do you have access to any wood working magazines? Shopsmith, ShopNotes and many others have had good tutorials in the past.

Woodchick,

There was an article in the August 2006 Fine Wood Working magazine that really helped me. It is about half-blind dovetails, but the technique that the author Carl Swenson demonstrates is really applicable to all dovetails. Another article from July/August 2002 by Janet Collins was also good but not, in my opion at least, as full of usefull techniques. The method of using a low angle on the saw to start proposed by Swenson really helped me to improve my dovetails.

Good luck.

map

-- measure once, cut once, swear, start over

Boy are you in luck….

http://www.tchisel.com/Video/

Videos 1 & 159. This should be about all you need :)

JC

-- Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan

I mainly went off of Rob Cosman’s handcut dovetail videos.
Really good and helpful.
Its’ really all about setup and preparation.
Take your time, setup and measure everything.
I was able to make decent dovetails with just a day or two of practice.

You can use pine and mash the wood too. Then you don’t have to be careful. Cut the tails and pins a little long. After you’re done, mash them with a mallet then plane the tails and pins flush.

TheCarver is right on. You will need ” a wicked shaaaahrp chisel a good hand saw and pay attention to the layouts. Then cut lots and lots on scraps and before you know it you will be amazed at how they look. Keep the first few to remind yourself of the mistakes. Good luck let us know your progress.

-- All bleeding will eventually stop.

Thanks so much you guys! I think it will only be a mater of time before I become more familure with dove tails and by the way I’m doing hafe blind dove tails, by hand.

-- How much wood could a wood chick chuck if a wood chick could chuck wood?

Woodchick, if you’re interested in handcut, I have a few blogs you might take a look at:

Handcut Double Dovetail

Radial Dovetail

Houndstooth Dovetail

I also would recommend Rob Cosman’s dvd series.

-- Martin, Kansas