I had never seriously attempted to cut a dovetail joint before, since I don’t usually make many drawers, small chests, or other items where this type of joint is commonly seen. Additionally, they didn’t seem easy to make, and I suppose I always avoided this type of joint partly because of that. The problem is that not addressing this topic in a woodworking blog is a bit of a giveaway, not having personally attempted one of the joints that most catches our attention due to its “complexity” and appearance. So, it’s time to tackle this type of wood joint.
The idea was to cut the tails using the sliding fence and the router table so that I would only have to cut the pins by hand. I thought it would be a simple task and video, but even before starting, I encountered some problems that I will discuss in the next entry of this blog. Even so, I decided to stick to the “pre-planned plan,” prepare a couple of boards with the homemade thickness planer, and continue with my practice of cutting dovetail joints while thinking about how to solve problems and explain things. Until the culminating moment of the whole process arrived: joining both boards, checking the result, and estimating my own skill … and the surprise … well, given my distraction and cutting where I shouldn’t have, it’s lucky I didn’t cut off a finger.
At least I learned a couple of things:
– With this softwood, it’s not easy to make clean cuts with the router table or straight cuts with the fret saw to try to obtain a halfway decent dovetail joint.
– I don’t think it’s worth the effort to cut this type of joint in low-quality woods that add difficulty to the process on top of everything else.