Mastery of hand cut dovetails

How awesome are your handcut dovetails.

  • Achieve flawless mastery every time

    Votes: 1 2.4%
  • Manage to get them to come out sometimes

    Votes: 11 26.2%
  • Managed to make a perfect set once, never repeated

    Votes: 3 7.1%
  • They look ok after shims and gap filling

    Votes: 6 14.3%
  • Well at least they're sturdy

    Votes: 3 7.1%
  • An angry beaver appears to have attacked my work

    Votes: 2 4.8%
  • This is something I'd like to attempt someday

    Votes: 9 21.4%
  • Doing this appears to be a new level of insanity, not for me

    Votes: 7 16.7%

  • Total voters
    42

Ryan Mooney

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The Gorge Area, Oregon
I've been playing with more hand cutting dovetails. Taking the "do one set per day and twice on Saturday" approach and they're starting to look like something resembling dovetails, although I've been sticking with the plain through dovetails for now (planning to move to blind/half blind and mitred once these start to look better).

Was curious how many other folks have gone down this route or decided not to :D
 
It's simple: I'm a power tool junkie and proud of it! I use dovetails when there's a good reason to use them for esthetics, otherwise my furniture is plenty sturdy without them.
 
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Power tool junkie here as well.

I have tries several hand cut dovetails. Saying that they look OK after lots of shims and wood filler is a bit of an exaggeration.:doh:

Bottom line is I don't really have the patience for most hand tools. I have been using the planes that folks at FWW have send me more frequently and with some success :thumb:
 
I started down this path because there were a few things I wanted to make that have will (imho) look better with hand cut dovetails. Specifically some of the narrow little pin ones which I find irrationally attractive). I'd agree that with modern glues a lot of other joints are plenty sturdy (but that's not why I'm here :D).

There are also a few things that seemed harder to setup with power tools. I'm working on a stand that has some sloped support bars which I was going to dovetail into the stretchers with (sort of) half blind sliding dovetails (ish :rofl:). I can do direct transfer pretty easily but doing the layout would be .. interesting.. with the angles involved.

After doing a dozen or so they're getting ~close~ to being as fast for small stuff as it would be to setup a jig to do them for a one off.. Certainly if you were doing a lot of them that would be unlikely to be true. Notice I'm not claiming they're as tight (yet) but the light does appear to be somewhere down the tunnel now at least.

The path from "I'd like to try this" through "angry beaver" to "looks moderately ok with judicious shimming" was somewhat faster than I'd feared but slower than I'd hoped :D
 
I did the one a day drill several years ago and got pretty good at it....then never built anything with dovetails. I like the narrow pin ones too. I might give them a shot on some jewelry boxes sometime.
 
I've been playing with more hand cutting dovetails. Taking the "do one set per day and twice on Saturday" approach and they're starting to look like something resembling dovetails, although I've been sticking with the plain through dovetails for now (planning to move to blind/half blind and mitred once these start to look better).

Was curious how many other folks have gone down this route or decided not to :D

I didn't vote as there was not a category that fit. The first category is perfection and no one is perfect. If I were to add a category that fits me it would be "Manages to make them come out looking good most of the time".

The key is the sawing and I enjoy hand sawing dovetails and tenons. I think I am good at it. I am not sure if it is natural ability or just practice, maybe both. It is very satisfying to know that you can do something that most people find difficult. In general, I really don't get much satisfaction from accomplishing a goal that is easily obtained. Maybe that is why I enjoy working with hand tools so much. I like walking the more difficult path.
 
I didn't vote as there was not a category that fit. The first category is perfection and no one is perfect. If I were to add a category that fits me it would be "Manages to make them come out looking good most of the time".

I'd be willing to bet your 'Looking Good' most of us mere mortals would consider darn close to perfect. :thumb:
 
I'd be willing to bet your 'Looking Good' most of us mere mortals would consider darn close to perfect. :thumb:

:wave: Yep, this!

Having an intermediate step may have been more accurate but I'm voting Bill is closer to 1 than 2 and I'll take that as our only 1 vote thus far :D


I can agree with the accurate sawing and I will add that practising dovetails has made some of my other hand sawing better as well. Although I admit to flagrantly paring back to the lines when I actually need it to work.. I've also been impressed about how spiffy a well thought out shimming works (with full understanding that both of these are crutches).
 
I didn't vote as there was not a category that fit. The first category is perfection and no one is perfect. If I were to add a category that fits me it would be "Manages to make them come out looking good most of the time".

I agree that the category which matched my experience was absent -- I too, did not vote for that reason.
 
I've been playing with more hand cutting dovetails. Taking the "do one set per day and twice on Saturday" approach and they're starting to look like something resembling dovetails, although I've been sticking with the plain through dovetails for now (planning to move to blind/half blind and mitred once these start to look better).

Was curious how many other folks have gone down this route or decided not to :D

I did that some time ago and I must admit that my technique improved a lot. As many of those things, if you stop practicing you loose the knack of it unless you've doing them for years. You can see my exercises here:http://familywoodworking.org/forums...-exercises/page2&highlight=hand+cut+dovetails
 
I agree that the category which matched my experience was absent -- I too, did not vote for that reason.

:doh: I think you guys are maybe taking that to literally. Who could have imagined the most controversial thing would be a definition of flawless and mastery :rolleyes: I don't think I can change the options now - but consider:
"Achieve flawless mastery every time"
to instead mean:
"I'm quite good at these (even if I'm not Frank Klausz)"
 
:doh: I think you guys are maybe taking that to literally. Who could have imagined the most controversial thing would be a definition of flawless and mastery :rolleyes: I don't think I can change the options now - but consider:
"Achieve flawless mastery every time"
to instead mean:
"I'm quite good at these (even if I'm not Frank Klausz)"

Hey! I just don't want to antagonize the woodworking gods otherwise my dovetails might start fitting into the "An angry beaver appears to have attacked my work" category.

As a golfer, I know all to well not to get too confident that you have it all mastered. Humble pie really has a bad after taste that lasts a long time.
 
Hey! I just don't want to antagonize the woodworking gods otherwise my dovetails might start fitting into the "An angry beaver appears to have attacked my work" category.

As a golfer, I know all to well not to get too confident that you have it all mastered. Humble pie really has a bad after taste that lasts a long time.

:rofl: You should work in computers, you'd think a bunch of techies wouldn't be superstitious but boy you never say anything to tempt the pager or you'll be the one buying beer later.
 
I'm a hybrid woodworker, using hand and power tools about equally. The very first set I did turned out perfect. I sure sweated that bunch, though, and it's a good thing we weren't timing it. Not since have I hit perfection, but most of them are pretty presentable. If in a rush, I cut the tails with a dovetail bit in a router table and set up a jig for the bandsaw. I've done them on the tablesaw, too, but really those methods aren't much faster than doing them by hand.
 
but really those methods aren't much faster than doing them by hand.

That's sort of the conclusion I've come to as well. The jigs and what not can be faster for bulk jobs but for one offs it's often faster by hand, at least once you get past the learning curve. Perhaps that says more about the quality of my jigs than anything but.. there it is.
 
I do them by hand or a few reasons.

1. I have reached a point where mastery of skills is more important to me than production.
2. I'm adept enough that if I'm only doing a few drawers, I can get them done quickly enough to suit me.
3. I get a lot of personal satisfaction being able to say "made by hand".

That being said, if I had a production run of drawers I would do them by machine.
 
Recently started hand cutting dovetails. I thought my chisels were sharp enough, found out just how wrong I was. Seems I needed to go back to the stone and hone those skills first! What a huge difference in getting closer to being able to turn out something acceptable to a project.
 
I find them attractive. I use them when a client wants them. I prefer other joints when I have the choice. Like red oak furniture in the 70's (at least on the left coast) I am overloaded by them of late but, they are always an eye-catcher when showing your work. They are a skill I should improve upon if for no other reason than that those same skills translate to other joinery ;-)
 
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