I just got back to the hotel. It’s after 5:30p and it’s over 100 degrees outside. The class is in an old, non-AC’d, warehouse. Did I mention it’s over 100 degrees outside?
The class was great. Gary, owner/teacher of the Northwest Woodworking Studio, first started out with the notion that before you jump in and mess up a project with dovetails, you should do a warmup. He called it his 5-minute dovetails and he reckoned it was similar to a musician warming up before a concert. He had us try it with poplar and then cherry (scraps of about 2″x2″) and a few different techniques including using a coping saw vs chiseling out waste.
In the afternoon, we began working with our real materials. We are making a cherry blanket chest though the size is more of a small toy chest (about 15″ tall and may 20″ x 15″ L/W).
I struggled with planing. It took me quite some time to set up my plane to get the right shaving thickness. Also, I don’t feel I have enough radius in my plane blade. I wasn’t happy with the results of planing. Though with a little scraping though (learned a bunch about that), I mostly fixed the plane issues.
The dovetails were interesting. He started off discussing design options including the notion that regularly spaced dovetails are kind of boring. We discussed pin size, tail size, quantity, position, and strength of each of these options.
I finished the front (or the back) tail board. Tomorrow it’s on to the pins and maybe even dry fit the entire thing if I make enough progress.
