Dovetails by machine and by hand
In this master class episode, Tom McLaughlin demonstrates how he uses a custom ground dovetail blade to cut the tails before heading to the bench and using hand tools to finish the case dovetails.
Jan 15, 2021
Sponsored by Lee Valley/Veritas
A dovetail blade makes cutting dovetails on the tablesaw almost a no-brainer. Almost any blade can be reground by a good saw-sharpening service so that all the teeth are at a consistent angle, usually 7° to 12°. The tails are cut on the tablesaw with the blade tilted to match the slope of the dovetail and angled teeth. The pins are cut by hand. Because you are just cutting to a line, you can use any spacing, including asymmetrical. While you can use any blade to cut dovetails, this specially ground blade gives better results because the angled blade cuts right up to the baseline and leaves a flat, clean surface all the way into the corner with little to no cleanup required. To use it, I set the angle of the blade to 10° and raise the blade until it just touches the baseline. If I have set the blade correctly, the top of each cut is smooth and exactly parallel to the baseline and there’s very little paring to do. The real advantage of this system, aside from speed, is that each of the tails will come out dead straight and exactly square to the face of the board, which is critical before you can transfer the tails to the pin board.
Writeup from Bob Van Dyke’s article Tablesaw Blades For Joinery in issue #253
 |
|
 |
Dovetailing on the tablesawDECEMBER 24, 2019 |
More episodes from this Master Class series:
 |
|
 |
|
Comments
As always, great video! As informative and entertaining as ever. I do have a couple questions for Tom, though. I’ve seen Mike Peckovich use a specially ground dovetail blade as well, and I have been curious about the blades (tooth count/configure, brand, etc.) What kind do you use Tom? Is it a dovetail blade from birt, or a more traditional saw blade that you have ground to suit you needs?
I have been trying to find a better bench lamp lately as well. I’ve been using an old drafting table style articulating lamp, but it’s cumbersome and too dim. What kind of lamp were you using hike cutting your pin board?
Thanks in advance. Epic woodworking is my favorite YouTube subscription! We'll keep watching all the content here in the Philadelphia area!
Tom’s a fantastic presenter and although I’ve seen many dovetailing videos, it’s still a treat to watch someone as capable as he is go at it.
Great video all around. 👍🏼
Very much enjoying these videos with Tom McLaughlin. He has a wealth of knowledge and is an excellent instructor. I just wish they were longer at say 30 minutes instead of ten. Hey we’re woodworkers we can maintain focus for more than ten minutes!
The gaps in hand-cut dovetails result from not having perfectly vertical saw cuts. You use the first board as a template to scribe the layout on the second board. However, the face you are using as a template is not the face you see when the joint is put together. This is true whether you cut tails or pins first. The table saw method insures that the walls of the pin sockets (the tails) are square to the base line. You still have to cut the mating pins accurately by hand, but at least one variable has been eliminated.
Good video. Why are there so many pop up ads on a pay site?
Log in or create an account to post a comment.
Sign up Log in