Thread: Wood working help

Originally Posted by Detach

IJsBlok those are awesome dovetails!! The thing is, i usually pick things up very quickly and it frustrates me that I am not able to produce quality results out of the gates. How do you do the middle one? With the dovetails and the mitered top?


And thank you guys for all the advice, i knew this would be the right place to go :-)

One other tip (for the wood to choose) the woods that work great for making dovetails are:

1 beech (photo 1 and 3 )
2 cherry, american and european (photo 2 the red side = american)
3 oak (although this one breaks out faster)
4 plane
5 walnut ( photo 2 brown/black side)
6 maple

My advice for you is: practice on beech, it's a very nice wood to slice and it's very cheap.

Surely there are more but I find those to work great.

Oke to the point here

The middle one with mitred sides isnt that extra work to do but you need to hold your head together.

steps:

1: Make your dovetails just the way you made them before. But now we need to place the tails a little different. Draw them in a way, so you have 2 HALF tails on the sides. 1 on the one side, 1 on the other side. Cut them clean and go to the next step.

2: Put your tails on the end grain (were the pins will come) again and slice the location were the pins need to go. saw/cut the pins clean. DO NOT cut the side pins away yet!! now we will look at those mitred points.

3:First you take your tail piece and saw/cut the end tails perfecly mitre.
The reason we didn't make the mitred points in step 1 is because if we did, we were not able to slice the place of the tails on the end grain for the pins.(It will not lay flat on the surface)

4: Then take your pin piece and you will start to see what you need to do to fit the joint. Yep, you need to make a mitred end on the side pins. (Do not make the end pins completely mitre, just the area where the pin piece will meet the mitred tail.

darn, it's hard to explain without images but I hope that you understand what to do.

Btw, I'm new on straight razor place and shaving with a straight for a month now. Shaver is a worldmaster silversteel. And going under the knife again today

Good look with your dovetails! If you need more help just say.


IJsBlok

I am a wood finisher by trade, so as far as the finish goes, exactly what do you mean by oil finish?

Well, i don't want a stain, just something that will seal and protect the wood and bring out the natural beauty. I'm not sure what that would be though :P

Did the book arrive yet?

no sir, however i do have a campus PO box and i DID check it pretty early today so they may not have given me the package slip yet. It should be here tomorrow, or hopefully wednesday before i leave town for a week :P

This is just a progress report on how things are going. I made these guys just about 10 mins ago out of walnut. icedog, the book REALLY helped.

That is remarkable. I am really impressed and I have been doing woodworking for many years. What booK?

Haha mackie i don't want you to think that i went straight from the first three to the walnut. No sir, there has been many dovetails between. I bought a marking gauge and a bevel gauge so marking the cuts has GREATLY improved. I spent about an hour one day practicing cuts on a spare piece of red oak making sure my pin cuts were vertical and not at an angle and making sure the tail cuts were right on the mark. I tried pine, red oak, maple, and walnut. The walnut IMHO looks the best but when sawing the maple it smells like breakfast :-) But to answer your question Mackie, the book is "the Complete Dovetail" by Ian Kirby. It was loaned to me by icedog.

There is one thing i still need to work on. The fit of my last few dovetails has been a little TOO tight to the point where when i tamp them together the wood splits a little on the half pins. All in all I am getting very satisfied with my skills :-)

A coarse file will take care of that. It is better if they are a little tight than loose for that reason. Some wood workers use a sharp chisel.

Originally Posted by Detach

Haha mackie i don't want you to think that i went straight from the first three to the walnut. No sir, there has been many dovetails between. I bought a marking gauge and a bevel gauge so marking the cuts has GREATLY improved. I spent about an hour one day practicing cuts on a spare piece of red oak making sure my pin cuts were vertical and not at an angle and making sure the tail cuts were right on the mark. I tried pine, red oak, maple, and walnut. The walnut IMHO looks the best but when sawing the maple it smells like breakfast :-) But to answer your question Mackie, the book is "the Complete Dovetail" by Ian Kirby. It was loaned to me by icedog.

There is one thing i still need to work on. The fit of my last few dovetails has been a little TOO tight to the point where when i tamp them together the wood splits a little on the half pins. All in all I am getting very satisfied with my skills :-)

I'm glad to see that there's a huge improvement when comparing these new to the first dovetails you made. That is all about thinking, time, patience and practising.
If your new dovetails are too tight, it is no problemo, as you can always use some sandpaper or file to make them fit perfectly.