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
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Dovetailing on the tablesawDECEMBER 24, 2019 |
More episodes from this Master Class series:
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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!
not to speak for tom, but i use forrest custom ground dovetail blades. i have two. one ground for 8:1 and the other for 6:1 ratios. they are 30 tooth rip blades that have been custom ground. i love forrest blades. they are very high quality and over the years i have spent a small fortune on the various blades and the dado set.
that said, last year i needed a flat ground reversible grove set and because of the pandemic forrest was completely slammed. they could not fill my order for six months and i ultimately wound up cancelling it. in desperation i reached out to ridge carbide and they were happy to fill the order. i am glad that i did. ridge carbide blades are every bit as good as forrest at a significant discount.
hope this helps.
It surely does help! Thanks a lot! I have heard good things about Ridge Carbide, and after hearing this, I will be giving them a try. I have an old high tooth count Forrest WoodworkerII that’s well past due for a sharpening, and planned to order a ww2 combo when I sent it in, but I believe I’ll go with the Ridge equivalent instead.
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!
"Hey we’re woodworkers we can maintain focus for more than ten minutes!"
a-man brother! i've often wished some of these videos were much longer and went in to grater depth and detail.
Ya'll know about our video workshops right? 12 hours of video on many of the projects.
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?
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