This Week in Wood » Dovetails

Back to the desk (Standing Laptop Desk)

glennth — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:54:16 +0000

While I was working on the guitar (see previous post), I’ve had a nearly completed desk in my shop. It’s been quite handing with having another surface to place tools, work items and such on. However, it’s been nagging at me to get it done.

Well, this week I was able to get BACK TO THE DESK (movie title?).

The only woodworking left to do was to build the desk. I wanted a thick drawer front with half blind dovetails in them and full dovetails in the back of the drawer. The half blind dovetails were not all that hard (other than cutting them out in maple vs the drawer sides in a form of pine). I clearly need to work on them more as they were not perfectly tight but as I’ve learned with my dovetail practicing (many posts ago), this does get better as more are cut. I like this for drawers so I expect to see more of these. Here is a shot of the dovetails:

In addition to the dovetails, I needed to fit the drawer and ran into a problem. I had cut a groove and made some wood clips but unfortunately, the wood clips were too wide and hitting the drawer which is full width. I switched out the wooden clips for desktop attach clips I got from woodcraft. They went on very easily and freed up the drawer slot. After a little hand plane work on the slot and the drawer, I got a nice fit. Here is a shot of the drawer sliding in it’s slot after all that work.

I’ve used a plywood bottom (seemed too costly to use a 1/4″ glued up panel – both costly in time and money) so it’s a cheat I can live with. I’ve glued it up and tomorrow I start doing the finish sanding getting ready to apply a finish.

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Back to the desk (Standing Laptop Desk)

Project Wood

glennth — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:06:05 +0000

OK, I’ve finally gotten the wood (actually I got it last week). I got, hopefully, the right number of board feet of maple for a Standing Laptop Desk with drawer. The entire desk will be maple except for the drawer. The inside of the drawer will be pine and the front face (with half blind dovetails – never done those before so should be fun) will be maple. The top of the desk will be 41″ high for standing or sitting on a stool. The primary purpose for the laptop is to work with me playing my guitar and learning songs.

See my previous post on the Standing Laptop Desk for a general idea of what it should look like.

Here is a shot of most of the wood stickered waiting to be prepped.

Small Epiphany – Dovetails

glennth — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:33:57 +0000

In my daily (ok, not daily but nearly so) practice of hand cut dovetails, I came together with a finished practice joint that was very tight. I still had one small gap (I’ll talk about that in a bit) but the sides were very tight.

In the cutting of the sides of the tails and pins, I’ve been struggling with keeping the cuts parallel and plum. I’ve also struggled with how close to the marking line to cut. I think that I’m starting to understand the required technique. I feel like placing the blade so that one side touches the edge of the marking line (from the inside of the material to be removed) is the best place. Also, I’ve found that using a square to make sure the marked line for the sides is perpendicular to the bench top works best. I’ve done this several times now and have got increasingly tight sides where it’s not too tight (too tight splits out the dovetails). I’m very pleased.

Now as to the gap, this is from the chisel line. I’m still struggling with how to chisel out the wood to the marked line. I haven’t found a similar epiphany for this. I’ll keep at it and hope to find the thing that gets me the tight and great looking joint. I’m open to any suggestions from any readers.

Dovetail practice

glennth — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:29:35 +0000

Just a quick post. In addition to the mortise and tenons, I have continued on with my dovetail practice. I hope I’m reaching a significant milestone because I cut one of my best dovetails yet. It was tight (except for one small corner) in all places. A joint like that would be one that I could be very proud of in a real project.

More dovetail practice – oak

glennth — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:20:15 +0000

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have taken a path to practice hand cut dovetails. In the first round, I worked with poplar.

Now, I’m down the path of using oak. My first attempt (back before Thanksgiving) was a disaster. I had forgotten how easy it is to split oak and I did split the oak when I tried to force together joints that were too tight (by quite a bit).

Today, I took the lessons of my previous attempt and to it slow and didn’t use force on either cutting the dovetails or fitting the dovetails. Getting the joints tight enough to not have gaps seems harder with oak but after a little patience, I succeeded in a decent first attempt.

I’m using a Lee Valley/Veritas dovetail saw. I think my biggest issue is cutting a square/straight cut. I am having to adjust them by parring them down and that does not give me the best fit. I will keep working with the oak and hopefully, this practice will be able to be applied to other hard woods as well.

Any readers who have had more experience and success that have any advice, I would love to hear from you.

Back to practicing dovetails

glennth — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:19:23 +0000

I’ve mentioned in the past that I am practicing hand cut dovetails (see Practice Update). Our family had a run with the flew so it’s taken a few weeks to get back into a normal groove. I haven’t been to the shop in almost 3 weeks – not good. I’ve cut up some blanks. This time I’m doing OAK instead of POPLAR.

I’ve tried one attempt and it was a disaster. I’m apparently using too much force/muscle (which I tend to do since I have some). OAK is very hard but it seems a bit brittle compared to the poplar too. I managed to split the blank I was working with. This is due to force and maybe I need to sharpen my chisels (though I’m sure they are pretty sharp). I’m going to do some sharpening and try a more gentle approach and see if I can get this done. Wish me luck.

Dovetail Practice – an update

glennth — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:09:24 +0000

OK, I’ve been practicing…and practicing…and practicing…and…

Here are some of my test samples:

I’ve tried both tails first and pins first. Pins first is frustrating. I find that I make many more errors with pins probably due to assumptions and skipping steps. For instance, when I make tails first, I mark the waste before I cut. I forget this step a lot so after I cut pins and then mark out the tails, I cut on the wrong side of the mark lines. Very aggravating. I’ll stick with tails first.

The results are better but I think after the first few, progress slows down. I get fewer and smaller gaps now. They are mostly due to saw cuts needing to be straighter followed by straight chisel cuts. These test runs have been done on poplar. I will start test runs with oak soon.

Dovetails – Tails vs Pins

glennth — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:32:45 +0000

As I noted in a previous post regarding my Handcut Dovetail Hopechest class, we learned about cutting tails first. I came into the class with no opinion on the old battle about cutting pins vs tails first. Even if I had, I would have probably gone with the direction from the class. What’s the point in taking a class unless you are there to learn what they are teaching?

Recently, I came across some reasoning why pins should be cut. The majority of the reasons were not really valid to me. I mean they were fine reasons but usually had a balancing reason for the opposite point of view. One reason though seemed simple and clear. It’s not a major reasons but a minor convenience improvement.

It comes down to marking the opposing item (pins if tails are cut first or tails in pins are cut first). When you cut tails first, you need to go to an extra step to mark the pins out. From my class, it required finding some support for the tails board while you hold it at 90 degrees to the pin board. On the other hand, if you cut pins first, the pin board gets to stand on the tails board with no additional support other than your hand holding it still and at 90 degrees.

I’ve only tried once but it does seem to be a minor improvement over the method. I’ll try it a few more times and see how it works out.

Are there any other thoughts on this eternal debate?

Handcut Dovetail practice

glennth — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:52:03 +0000

At the class on Handcut Dovetails that I attended at Northwest Woodworking Studio, for the first half of a day, we used a simple technique to practice cutting dovetails. Gary, the instructor, used the analogy of a muscisian or a runner warming up and I think that fits well.

All that is needed is blocks of wood that are dimmensioned to 2 1/2 to 3″ by 3-4″. 3/4″ is probably as good as any to work with on thickness. Gary also suggested practicing with a soft wood and a harder wood.

I went to the local borg warehouse store and bought a stick of poplar and oak which were 3″ wide and 3/4″ thick. I will use my hand saws to cut off practice boards from each of these. This will give me some sawing practice. I will need to ensure squareness so my shooting board will get a bit of work too. Once I’ve made a bunch of practice samples, I will then get to work.

The purpose is not to cut a zillion dovetails in each board but rather practicing cutting to the line (splitting the line so to minimize or eliminate cleanup at the end), cutting square to the board, marking boards correctly. 2 1/2″ is really enough to have one dovetail in this case though 3″ might allow you to try cutting 2 at a time.

The goal is that from the cut to the fit is all you need. Cleanup should be minimized or eliminated. I’ve seen references to a notion that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something before you can consider yourself competent at it. I think that this is true for most woodworking techniques whether they require hand tools or power tools. There really are no short cuts though I’m betting the gains at near the end of the 10,000 hours are not as significant as the beginning.

So I hope to have a bunch of samples and get working on my 10,000 hours.