From: hawley@adobe.com (Steve Hawley)
Subject: Steve Learns to Cut Dovetails
Followup-To: rec.woodworking
Organization: Adobe Systems Inc.
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 00:01:10 GMT


Just for the heck of it, I decided to cut my first set of through
dovetails.  I'm in an adult education class that gives me access to
various and sundry nasty power tools and usually try to make the best
use of the time there for power tool usage, but since I'm stalled in
my current project until I get my butt in gear and get a few more
planks and the my current work situation lends new meaning to the
phrase "high stress", I thought I give this a try as I remember
someone else mentioning here that the laying out and cutting process
is very relaxing.

I agree 100%.  This could get to be very addicting.

So this is how it went:

I bought a bevel gauge and a cheap, but sharp and straight dovetail saw.  I
was going to buy a marking gauge, but I really didn't want one made of
plastic and since this was all the local Home Despot and hardware stores
had to offer, I decided to pass it up and pick one up at a flea market
at some unspecified date in the future.

Dug out the article from Woodsmith, grabbed a clear scrap of softwood, the
above tools, a tri-square, a coping saw and pencils and headed to shop.

A quick trip to the power mitre box left me with 4  8-7/8 inch long blanks
that were 3.5 inches wide and about 1/2 inch thick.  The plan would be to
make a simple frame. Followed the suggestions in Woodsmith for labeling the
boards and started laying out board thicknesses.  I quickly found out just
how handy the marking gauge would have been at this point.  Oh well.  A
little lost time.  Picked and eye-pleasing angle for the bevel guage and
started laying out pins.  I tried to set it up so that I would have 2 wide
tails and 1 narrow tail.  I only had to re-label a couple of the boards.

I started sawing out the dead space between pins.  I was having a lot of
trouble keeping the saw straight and level and cutting was taking much more
force than I thought was needed.  No matter, it went quickly.  Rough cut
the
bottoms with the coping saw.  Then I just needed to clean out the tails
with
Uh oh.  Chisels.  I don't have any.  So I went and grabbed the shop's
chisels.
These are things that get abused by the mindless teenage youth of mountain
view 5 days a week.  It looked like someone used the 1/4 inch chisel as a
screwdriver.  I grabbed the shop teacher and asked him if he would teach me
how to sharpen chisels.  He looked at me funny and saud, "you mean you want
to _cut_ with these things?"  That didn't bode well.  I explained what I
needed and he looked at me like I had and extra head or something.  This
guy
is pro-power tools all the way.  No doubt about it.  But he heads over to
the
grinder and very quickly and very deftly squared them, put on a hollow
ground,
and a bevel, if I understand the process correctly.  He then dug out an oil
stone and cleaned up the work of the grinder, then apologized for not
having
a water stone handy, and proceeded to strop them on the back of his belt.
He handed me the chisels and said, "Now, we don't have a first aid kit, and
you have to clean up your own blood."  Hmmm.

A quick check revealed that I could easily remove fine shavings of
fingernail.

So now I tried to teach myself how to use a chisel.  I did OK.  I only
ruined
maybe 2 out of 16 of the pins.  The bottoms of the cut-outs were MOSTLY
level.
Then I saw the hint in Woodsmith abouit clamping a board even with the
baseline
to allow quick regular cutting of the bottoms.  I tried it on the remaing
two
and by gum, it works.  Time to clean up, so I pack everything up and head
home.
Took me about 2 hours to get this far.  I examined my hands and found that
I
had about a half dozen nicks and cuts, which is 6 more than I had gotten in
all the other class sections.  Big deal.

Next week, I finish cleaning up the last couple pins and then transfer them
onto the tail pieces.  I forgot to bring Woodsmith so I probably was
ignoring
an easy way to to it, but no matter.  This week I tried to let the weight
of
the saw do the cutting.  Wow!  I had to make about 4 times as many passes,
but boy could I cut straight and a helluva lot closer to the lines.  About
an hour later (much faster than the pins), I had the tails cleaned up and
dry fit to the pins.  Everything fit!  There are a lot of small gaps and
chips
and uneveness and that one tail where I cut on the wrong side of the line
(damn! damn! damn!), but it fit!  They are without a doubt truly horrible,
but
there is absolutely NO give if you pull the pin boards away from each
other.
In fact, I have held one side and pulled with my whole weight against
someone
ont the other side and it holds together.

I have a silent hope that these will be the absolute worst dovetails I'll
ever
cut, but they certainly won't be the last.

Next step - a dozuki, a marking guage and chisels of my own, so I don't
have
to repair damage done by hundreds of cretins (as opposed to just one).

Steve Hawley
hawley@adobe.com