I’m building a Shaker cradle, and starting to wonder.
I see how to cut the compound dovetails by hand, but how would you cut them with a jig?
Apparently, the only jigs that claim they will work are Porter Cable and Keller.
I have an old Keller around here somewhere, but I don’t see how it can be used, and there is actually very little information on how to do it on the web.
I found the Porter-Cable “supplementary” instructions, but they’re so poorly written that I couldn’t make heads nor tails of them.
How would you use a jig and a router to cut compound dovetails?
Replies
My first question would be whether you like the appearance of the compound DTs cut with the PC jig, as illustrated in the supplemental "guide" (mis-guide? ;-) ). They run perpendicular to the flat surface, rather than parallel to the base of the tray. To me, that ruins the lines of the tray.
The PC instructions use a spacer block attached to the front of the jig to create one of the angles of the compound joint, but not both. The other angle, apparently, is compensated for by trimming the joint area to the other angle. That approach should also work on other jigs, such as the Leigh.
I agree, however, that both the basic and supplemental PC jig manuals need to be re-written and re-illustrated. As is, the manuals leave out or gloss over key points in the process.
Not Good
Figures.
After playing around with it for a couple hours, I've come to the conclusion that, as you say, key points are left out of the instructions.
And I agree, machine cut compound dovetails just don't look right.
I don't see how a "correct" compound dovetail could be cut by machine-- the tail itself needs to be asymmetrical to look right, and if I'd stopped long enough to realize that, I would have just laid them out and cut them, rather than screwing around with jigs.
This reminds me of a cabinet I installed in the early eighties. I needed to trim something like 3/8" off of it, and I got all locked into the idea of a precision cut, and wrapped around the axle about how I was going to do it. I finally decided that what I needed was a radial arm saw. Which was a problem, because I didn't HAVE a radial arm saw at the time.
But dad did. He (who was a REAL contractor) said that sure, I could come borrow it, but I'd have to set it up, it was stored at the moment in a warehouse.
Or, he said, I could just lay out a line and use a handsaw...
methods, axles and wraps
Gadzooks!? A hand saw? Surely, a FesSaw could have done the job on a FesTable. ;-)
My Leigh-Jig D4R can do this joint with a block cut to hold the piece but as the others say the angle of the wood should be very slight otherwise the grain and angle of the dovetail start to make for a lot of short grain (read weak wood). The best way is to alter the angle of the dovetails and that means using handcut dovetails.
Robert.
Yup
That was exactly my conclusion. It's going to be hand cut for the win.
Leigh jig instructions
See the very detailed instructions for angled dovetails using the Leigh jig
http://www.leighjigs.com/data/leighadt.pdf
Regis
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled