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Hand Cut Dovetails??
Monday, 4th October 2010 20:57 PM
Regular readers of my blog will have noticed that David and I do not always see eye to eye about some aspects of furniture making. Sometimes this leads to disagreements, at others the compromise leads to an improved way of working, dovetails are a case in point.
The kitchen we are working on at present has nineteen dovetailed drawers in it. To cut this number of dovetails by hand would take a very long time, and also threaten ones sanity. Fortunately David is the proud owner of a piece of equipment called a Woodrat. This can be used in combination with a router to produce dovetail joints. In the past I have been a little disparaging about this piece of kit, implying that it was deskilling, however I can see its benefits in this situation.
Previously David has cut the dovetails by sticking about six of the drawer sides together with double backed tape, marking them up and then cutting them on the band saw using a simple jig. The waste was cut away by repeated cuts on the band saw then cleaned up with a harp chisel. He would then go on to cut the pins which go between the dovetails using the Woodrat, working in this way he could achieve the traditional configuration of large dovetails with narrow pins.
My method was to mark up just one drawer side and use this to set up a more complex jig. I would set the jig to make a cut on the marked board and then use it to make identical cuts on all the other boards. This would be repeated for all the other cut positions. The waste between the dovetails was cut away as above. I would then use the cut dovetails as a template to mark the pin positions (the traditional method). The pin sides were sawn with a hand saw and the waste removed using a router and shop made jig.
As we were working on a large scale we decided to try to arrive at the most efficient but simple system for doing the job. We made a jig consisting of an MDF base board and four dowels positioned to hold the piece at the right angle to cut the tail (see picture). We had sets of drawers of different depths. The dovetails were symmetrical across the board, so on one board for each drawer depth the dovetails were marked out across half the width. The side was positioned in the jig using a toggle clamp to hold a stop in the correct position and the fence set to cut in the correct position (see picture). A stop was also set to prevent the cut going too far. The cut was made and the board flipped over and a second cut made on the other side. This was repeated on all the other boards in the set. The original board was then used to set up the next cut. And so on. This made all the cuts on one side of the dovetails, to achieve the cuts on the other side the dowels were repositioned to angle the board in the opposite direction, and the process repeated.
Removing the waste between the dovetails was done as before using the bandsaw but a stop was used to prevent overshooting. Using a stop on bandsaw cuts speed things up, as you do not need to slow down at the end of the cut for accuracy.
The remainder of the waste was removed with a sharp chisel as before. The pins were cut using the Woodrat.
Working in this way David was able to dovetail a complete drawer and groove in the bottom in three hours. Making it about 60 hours for the whole set of drawers.
We are quite pleased with the simplicity of the jig and method and will certainly use it again for large drawer projects. However it does beg one important question. Are our dovetails hand cut? David maintains that they are, I have a more literal approach to these sort of questions and have serious misgivings about claiming that our dovetails are hand cut. The jig for cutting the dovetails was made by ourselves and we controlled the cut by setting up the jig position, but beyond this the actual cutting was not mechanised
I would be really interested in your opinion on this, at what point does hand cut become machine made, feel free to comment.
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A simple dovetail jig. Note how the dowels can be swapped to change the sutting angle and the stop held by the toggle clamp.
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The first cut.
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Subsequent cut with the dowels moved to change the angle
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Removing the waste using repeated cuts, note stop
Comments…Add yours
Posted by Jason on 08/10/10
Chris, I think possibly to save being accused of calling them hand-cut when it is arguable whether they are or not, if you just call them dovetails, is it likely that the lay-person would presume they were hand cut anyway? Or perhaps a there should be two definitions: Traditional hand-cut (with a hand saw) and contemporary hand-cut!?
Posted by Chris on 12/10/10
Hi Jason
I like the idea of contemporary hand cut dovetails, it has a certain ring to it.
Posted by jaap on 13/04/11
yes, but what is the difference with a jig and a routerbit? Only the looks of the dovetail? You're still machining away the waste! Very interesting discussion!