marc: you asked for it andnow you're going to get it. today we're cutting some dovetails. (exhales) ah, that's good. (light music) welcome to episode 27of the wood whisperer. i'm your host marc spagnuoloand on today's show we're going to cut some through dovetails. dovetails are an extremely old joint. in fact they date back to thetimes of ancient egypt and
china, where from what iunderstand they've uncovered tombs that actuallyhad furniture pieces in it that contain dovetails,it's really amazing. dovetails are extremely strong, they're really attractiveand you can see why people like to includethem in their furniture. but why are they given so much emphasis, why is it the end all beall for most woodworkers? (ethereal music)
(whispering) dovetails. while dovetails are agreat way to attract the opposite sex they areby no means necessary. you can certainly constructdrawers and case work with a number of other joinerymethods including rabbets, you could certainly use dowels. i've even got an example right here. this is a drawer thati built for one of my favorite pieces, thislives in our living room.
i wanted to do something different. dovetails have been donea million times before, why do i need to do it again. what i have is a jatoba front, maple sides and wenge accent trim. if you take a look i've actuallygot three stainless steel dowels into a rabbet that wascut into the jatoba there. i just decided to dress it up by putting this little strip of wenge in the front.
unique, very strong,especially in a little decorative drawer like this, that holds business cards and mints,it's not a big deal. but the point is thisis every bit as strong as a dovetail joint andis really attractive too. people look at it and go, "whatis that? why did you do this?" it's a little bit unusualbut you can do that, you can make people keepguessing without using dovetails. dovetails are a littlebit predictable sometimes.
with that being said, dovetailswill indeed improve your work. they are something thatyou should strive to perfect and to get really good at making. one more thing to thinkabout when deciding whether or not to use dovetails inyour project is the recipient. think about whether or notthey have an appreciation for a dovetail, do they evenknow what a dovetail is. when i look around the forumsand hear the conversations that go on, sometimes itseems to me that we're
making dovetails toimpress other woodworkers. when you look at thefine difference between a hand-cut dovetail and onethat was cut by a machine, it's got to be a verydiscriminating person who collects furniture, or a woodworker,those are the only two people who can really pick out thedifference between them. and like i said, some people don't even know what a dovetail is. you need to keep thatin mind when designing
a project for a customeror even a family member. the other thing is youdon't necessarily want to let your customer's oryour recipient's standards of quality dictate your level of quality. if dovetails are the way you think drawers should be constructed then do that, because that's the standardyou set for yourself. the day i let a customer'sstandards dictate my stopping point in a project is the
day that i stop caring about my craft. before proceeding we should probably talk a little bit about terminology. a lot of times with dovetailsyou've got the terminology pins, tails, you're notreally sure what should be your drawer front, whichone should be your side. it can get pretty confusing so let's go over that really quickly. i've got two boards here and at
first glance they look pretty similar. but one of these is our tail board and the other is our pin board. and of course one ofthese is our drawer front and the other would be the drawer side. let me first show you theway i always tell them apart. if you look really closelyat them, face on like this, one of them looks like abird's tail or a duck's tail. the other one doesn't.
this one where the sidesflair out like that, that looks like a tail, andthat is your tail board. these are pins becausethey're not the tail board, i don't really know anything-there's nothing about that that makes me say,"hey, that looks like a pin." i know which one's the tail, process of elimination, this is your pin board. the one thing you really have to memorize, once you can figure that out,
is memorize which oneshould be your drawer front. your pins are always yourdrawer front, and if you have a sample joint you couldalways double check yourself. the joint goes togetherlike this, nice tight fit. i put the side piece on this way, this joint comes apart in this direction, which means that that wouldmake a horrible drawer front because you're alwayspulling on the drawer front, and this could easily come apart,
so that really makes nosense to do it that way. your pin board will alwaysbe the front of your drawer because i will not get this apartwithout breaking this piece. that's the natural magicof a dovetail joint, is it's naturally strongin that direction, and that's why it's perfect for drawers. let's quickly talk about thedifferent types of dovetails. you've got throughdovetails, which are one of the most popular onesyou're going to see,
that's what i have here as an example. the dovetail is visible fromthe front, from the side, goes all the way throughboth pieces of wood. then there's a thing calleda half-blind dovetail. half-blind dovetails are verypopular for drawers as well. they come in handy when youare doing an inset drawer because you can't see thejoinery from the front. it actually gets cut into the side, leaving a little bit ofsolid material at the front.
you get the advantage of the dovetail but you don't see the joinery. the third type is calledthe sliding dovetail. a sliding dovetail istypically used in case work, when you need to connectone piece vertically to another piece that's horizontal, and instead of using somethinglike a dado which is okay but certainly not as strong asa dovetail joint would be. you would not be able topull those pieces apart,
but it's a very goodjoinery for case work. since we're doingmachine-cut through dovetails today we should probablytalk about the jigs. there's a lot of jigs on the market and i can't even pretendto have used them all. i started off with a rocklerjig years ago, the old version of the rockler jig, andgraduated to this big guy here, the akeda, which is a pretty pricey unit. let me turn it around for you.
major upgrade over the rockler unit. the rockler unit was okaybut it was very frustrating to use and i didn't find it very accurate. by the time i was done i wantedto run it over with my car. but upgraded to the akedawhich i'd consider it an overpriced unit, but veryrepeatable, very quick setup, probably one of the quickestsetup dovetail jigs on the market but you're verylimited in your spacing. it is a pretty cool unit andi've had some luck with it.
here comes the big daddy. this is my pride and joy. before i install it let me show it to you. it's the leigh d4r, and in fact this is relatively new to the wood whisperer shop. this is what i consider tobe the industry standard, or what all other dovetailjigs wish they were. it's a fantastic jig, the ultimate in adjustability with your finger spacing.
you just can't say enough goodthings about a jig like this. anybody who's used one knowsexactly what i'm talking about. i do feel that it's wellworth the investment, and in fact if you don't thinkit's worth the investment, leigh has come out with anumber of other jigs in their super jig line that are a littlebit different in the concept but the quality is still there,definitely worth checking out. hopefully we'll be able todo a review on those one day. this one, i just pop into the holes.
and i've got a nicesturdy work surface where i can actually cut mydovetails and move my dovetail station around theshop, it's really handy. (bouncy synth music) now it's time to set up our routers. we're actually going tolook at our parts here and see what we've got to work with. i've got my wenge fronts and backs, actually the backs are maple,they're half-inch material.
then all of my side pieces here, all six of my side piecesare also half-inch material. that's really important. the thickness of your material,no matter what jig you're using, is going to dictatecertain setup positions or even bit sizes inthe instruction manual. you're going to liveand die by this manual, and no matter how manytimes i use my jigs, no matter what brand they are,
i am glued to this manualwhen i'm cutting my dovetails because i don'twant to make any mistakes. with a half-inch materialleigh has the recommended bit sizes, and we're goingto use two bits for this. that's the process that's involved in making through dovetails. i'm going to quickly put on the eight millimeter collet into the router. this is a 7/16ths of an inch guide bushing
and that's a very common size. in fact i've got two of them because i've got one from another kit, and that's what i'm goingto use on my second router. very simple you place it in here. there's a little recessedgroove, this guy drops in. and the little knurled nut, if you will, screws it from the other side. you tighten it as good as you can.
you really want to tightenthat down as hard as you can with your fingers, becausethis will vibrate a lot and you don't want that to loosenup while you're routing. one more thing before weactually make any cuts. a lot of times differentmanufacturers require you to do differentlittle things to make sure that the boards for yourdrawers are facing in a particular direction, sothat they're milled properly. in this particular case i don'tremember exactly what faces
out, what faces in for theindividual cuts, but i'm going to prepare for that by markingthe inside and the outside of each piece, so that we canhave it straightened out later. if you've got particularpieces that look exceptional, for instance you want aparticular orientation of your drawers one way or the other. the good thing is the waythis is going to work it's not going to matter, you canflip that back and forth. but you will probably have a side
that looks better than the other. in this case these are almost identical, but in a lot of cases onelooks better than the other so you want to mark theinside and the outside, so it's very clear which side is which. leigh recommends doing this, they want you to put a little box like this and then to put an arrow indicatinginside and outside. the other piece will have thearrow pointing to the outside.
that's kind of crazy. thoseare awfully similar and from a couple feet awaythey look the same to me, so i don't even bother with that. i use a very tricky, almost, i don't know, this is almost next level stuff. if this is the inside, i'mgoing to put the letter i. and if this is the outside,wait, wait for it, wait for it. the letter o. the one thing you're alwaysgoing to have to contend
with when you're cuttingdovetails is the war on tearout. when you're actuallyrouting through boards like this the grain, whichis running vertically, can very easily crack and bend down. this can be a very big problem,especially on splintery, nasty woods like wenge,it's a real problem. what i usually do to combatthat, i've got a few tricks and i'll show you those ina bit on the jig itself, but to stack the cards inmy favorite it'd be nice if
i could do something at thisstage to prepare this piece. one thing that you can do isuse one of these traditional scribes to scribe aline at the exact point where that bit is going to plunge through. what that will do is severthe fibers in that location, and make for the smoothestpossible cut you could get. i start by using my side pieceas reference, because i want to know what the exactthickness of that side piece is. then i'm going to transfer thatthickness to my front piece.
i'm really only concernedabout the outside because it's where the most visible areawould be where tearout can occur, and in most cases that'sgoing to be the exit side on the jig, so it's importantwe scribe on those locations. it's very simple, justrun it along the edge. take your time, do asmany passes as it takes, just to make sure you severthose front fibers like that. now we need to setupthe actual arrangement of the pins and tails on our board.
some jigs are more flexible than others, some don't give youany flexibility at all. for instance the akeda is only flexible in terms of eighth-inch increments. what makes the leigh such agreat jig, and there may be a few others out there buti know one of the hallmarks of this jig is the fact thatit's infinitely adjustable. let me show you how we'regoing to do that real quick. i'm taking one of my side pieces which
would be one of our pin boards. i'm mounting it into the jig. bring it up to thebottom of the guide here. this is the template. these little fingers dictate what we're going to be doing for the operation. the angled ones here,these are going to be for when we're cutting thepins, the side pieces. and the other side, you flip it over,
are for when we're doing the tails. even though we are actuallygoing to cut the tails first, in order to setup our designi'm going to use this side, i'm going to use thepin side because i can actually visualize whatthe joint is going to look like on the pin side thani can at the tail side. i'll slide the fingers onto the jig. it helps if you slide bothsides at the same speed. i'm going to lock that guy in place.
now once we're in positionwe're in a great situation here, where we could look froman overhead view and see what the shape of our jointis going to look like. these all separate and they move freely, that's the infinite adjustability here. and they tighten down withthat little screw head there. what you want to do ismake sure we ignore this first one, and we're goingto ignore the last one. these are both just for extra support
as the router moves off the space here. since this is the pinboard, i'm sure some of you have heard people say thatyou always want to start with a half pin on theside, meaning you want wood here and you wantwood on the end here. that gives you the ultimate in strength and it also ensures symmetry. what i like to do is i makethis little finger pretty much even with theoutside of the board here.
a lot of times you could just eyeball it. it looks like maybe about a 16th of an inch of wood is exposed on the side here. i'm going to push down on thefinger and lock that guy down. now i'm going to do the samething on this other side. let's mark this with a penciland we can see where we're at. we can always make adjustments later. that looks a little bit better,more spacing, proper spacing. we've got half pin, little pin, big pin,
big pin, little pin, half pin. that's the arrangement we'regoing to go for, i like that. now that we have our spacingset we can remove our pin board, because againwe're cutting tails first. this is the pin side so ineed to flip this guy over. we're going to go to the tail side and insert our tail board. pardon my interruption but i need to make an error announcement.
before you go any further into the video i need to clarify something. i did make a mistake, itwas pointed out to me by a couple guys on thecomments area of the post. the mistake that i made was i sort of made a rule in the beginningof the podcast that said for your drawer frontsyou always want the pins, and for the drawer sidesyou always want your tails. that's absolutely true, andif you look closely from
here on out you'll see idid the exact opposite. not intentionally, iprobably picked up the pieces and i was so focused on filming the podcast that i wasn'tpaying enough attention. the critical thing hereis i could go back, i could refilm everythingand make it look all perfect, but realistically, to meit's more important for you to know that that is avery easy mistake to make. as big of a mistake as it is,it's very easy to make it.
the podcast, this film,was my distraction. you've got a lot of distractions. maybe it's your kids runningin and out of the shop. maybe you're stillthinking about some crap that happened at work during the week. one thing or anothercan be on your mind and you should be 100 percentfocused on the task at hand in order notto make those mistakes. not to mention like i said,if you follow your manual
that came with your jig, youshouldn't make this mistake, it was just a silly thing that i did. i wanted to post this correctionso there's no confusion. i am not going back andredoing the whole video. i think it's critical that you see that this is a very easy mistake to make. correcting it just meansliterally recutting your parts and starting over, there's no wayto convert a tailboard into a pin board, unless youhappened to cut it extra long.
i've got a really nice sampledrawer here that happens to be a good example of how notto arrange your dovetail. as you can see i've gotthe tails in the front, pins on the side, and that'sthe opposite of what we want. enjoy the video, don'tlet that distract you. the core points that i've madein this video are still intact, and that's what you needto pay attention to. now we're going to cut ourtail boards and we have that tearout issue again that wehave to be concerned with.
i'm going to start byplacing a backer board into this top clamping bar here. this is going to be a supportthat's going to support the back of our work pieceso that as the router bit comes through those fibersare completely supported. i'm going to clamp in mytail piece into the jig. i'm going to move this backerpiece all the way forward. you see the little gap here?you want to close up that gap. you want to make sure we have full contact
between the backer pieceand our tail board. to set the height of the biton the router we first have to mark the thickness of our sideboard into our front piece, or in this case this isactually our back piece. let's refer to it as pin and tail piece. we're going to put our pin pieceup to our fingers like this, and again here's our tailpiece mounted in the jig. get a really sharp penciland on the underside i'm going to trace the pencil line.
look at that, almost there. it's almost like i've done this before. let it up really slow. the idea is we want to get it so that that bit is cutting that line in half. with the bit height set, pencil line isn't really going to help usanymore at this point. i'm going to take the masking tape. i just want enough to cover where
that bit is going to bottom out. now we've got supporton the front and on the back of the board, pluswe have our scribe line. there's really not a wholelot else we can do to ensure that we're notgoing to get tearout. if we still get tearout then thattearout deserves to be there. i don't know if that willwork for your customers. before i start i want toshow you another little tip. i always wax the base of my router,
and get that guide bushingnice and waxed up here. you could use whateverwax you want to, really. i'm using renaissance wax, it's one of my favorite machine topand work surface waxes. i'm also going to wax thetop of my fingers here. depending on the jig,depending on the size, if you're doing a reallywide blanket chest side piece you may havemore of a concern with this. look at the spacing on these fingers.
the guide bushing is goingto ride in here, then jump to this spot, then just to thatspot, then here and so on. what you want to make sure youavoid is if this spacing were just a little bit different,the space between here may actually be big enough to fitthat guide bushing in there, and you could really screwup the joint altogether. just be aware of that. they actually have littlethings that you can insert in between here to blockyou from going in there.
as long as you're awareof it usually that's enough to stop you frommaking that mistake. (groovy synth music) let's throw on our protection,eyes, ears and lungs, because we need those to work. (mechanical grinding) what we've got here, seei tore up some of that tape but look how cleanthose cuts are now. it's also important to note the technique
that i was using as i made the cuts. i like to start, especiallyon these wider ones. these are like a single passon the outside, and these half pins, but where they're alittle bit wider, we use the same technique when we do thepins with our straight bit. i like to do a climb cut, i'mgoing in the direction that you normally don't go witha router and a bit because it's in the same direction asthe motion of the bit itself. in this case it's acontrolled circumstance so
i just graze the front andi go from right to left, and that basically scores that front area. maybe one or two passes like that. then i go back to theright side, plunge through, come back out then goback to the left side and plunge through to get the rest of it. it's a systematic approach but what it results in is a nice clean cut like that, and that's exactly what we're looking for.
it's gorgeous. that's a, number one, topclass, prime choice cuts. now with the inside stillfacing out i'm going to flip my board over and i'm going toput my tails on the other side. then i'm going to do thisfor all of my front and back drawer pieces, andthen the tails are done, i don't have to touch them again. from that point we work on the pins and that will help us finesse the fit.
i have all of my tail pieces cut, they all came out really nice actually. now it's time to cut the pin pieces. we're going to flip our template over so that we can do our pins. that's all it is, you just flip it over. these are already set exactlywhere we need them to be. it doesn't get a wholelot easier than that. flip it over, i'm going to putit here on a setting, on my
little gauge, that the manufacturerrecommends you start at. all the finesse fit, allthe little detailed work that we're going to do tomake this this is a dead-on accurate fit is going to bedone using this scale up here. we're going to pull thattemplate in and out and make those pins wider ornarrower to perfect our fit. the other thing we can do at this time is we can set the bit height. we're going to actually usethe same exact technique that
we used last time, except forinstead of using a pin piece to mark our tails we're usinga tail piece to mark our pins. don't get too caughtup in the terminology, it all makes sense asyou're going through it. let's make sure thispiece is all the way up. incidentally as i'm doing this, you'll notice i've markedthis as my test piece. this is a piece of materialthat has been milled through the same exact process asall of my drawer pieces.
it basically representsa perfect test piece so that i can finesse thefit and get a perfect fit. i could do this 20 or 30times just cutting away the messed up dovetails eachand every time until i get the perfect fit that goesperfectly with these tails. let's take our tail piece, onceagain right up against those fingers, nice sharp pencilgives us a good pencil line. i've got my straight bit here, and the 7/16ths inch bushing here.
again i could have used therouter that i used before but i happened to have a secondrouter and i'd like to use it, so that that one can stayset up just in case i need, i don't know, maybe iscrewed something up. it should be fine, but justin case, for convenience, i'm going to use my second router. we use the plunge mechanismto set the height. once again we're going to envision splitting that line in half.
very close, very close. we need to take a littlebit more material off. in order to do thatwe're actually going to push the system, allthese fingers, we're going to push it back justa notch, away from us. that's going to let the bit contact more material and create wider gaps in here. we could see what we got here, that is a pretty good fit, it's nice and tight.
you could see i really am not seating it all the way down here. it will fit, i can see thedistance that's exposed here is the same as the amountof material i have to go. i don't really want topush it all the way in. a lot of times these dovetailsfit the best the first time. if you continually popit in and out you're going to compress those fibers and it actually becomes a littlebit looser of a fit.
there's enough here to tellme that that's good enough. very careful, i don't wantto tearout this wenge. now that the test board is done,this guy served its purpose, all we have to do at thispoint is throw in our true pin boards, the drawer sides,and we should be good to go. here's one of our finished drawers with the wenge fronts, maple sides. get a nice shot of that. this drawer actually isone of three that goes
into this unit that i'mbuilding for a customer. that's a whole lot of wenge right there. check this out, never doneanything like this before. this is one of the doors, which is a sheet of maple plywith a steel, i don't even know what this material iscalled but it's like a sheet steel that's been cut, andi trimmed it out with wenge. on the front we've got thisapplied piece of wenge as well, and a big long handle isgoing to be attached to that.
definitely a unique piece, never done anything like that before. i hope this episode gaveyou a decent amount of information so you knowwhat you're in for if you want to do somemachine-cut through dovetails. in the future we willcover things like the half-blind dovetails and we'll probably go into a little bit moretroubleshooting if things don't come out as perfectas i made them seem here.
it's very important to know howto troubleshoot those issues. we'd also like to mention that we just opened up the wood whisperer gear store. this means you can finallyget your t-shirts, hats, mugs, all kinds of things with thewood whisperer logo on it, and you're supporting theshow at the same time. go check that out, thelink should be on the right-hand side of the website,in the right-hand column. speaking of shirts i'd liketo thank chuck for having
this awesome shirt made up,very clever, appreciate that. until next time, we'll see you later.