Tails...
So the next little while will be quiet in my shop. No tailed tools...
Tonight we started on the tail boards for these six drawers.
Lots of different ways to do a dovetail. This way I am comfortable with and most times real happy with the result.
Tails first for me.
Good lighting is a must... I have a bench light to give these old eyes some extra help.
With all my stock cut to size I first clean the edges up at my shooting board.
This makes the scribed lines more visible.
Next we adjust the depth on my tite mark gauge and scribe some line around the tail and pin boards.
These will be my reference lines when sawing and using the chisels.
The chisels will sit in the scribe line to give one a nice straight baseline.
I put a little ledge on the backside of the tail boards. This will help line the tail board up with the pin board.
Makes scribing the pins a snap. For this I use a LN 140.
To mark out the layout of the pins and shoulders I use two dividers.
One set for the shoulders and one set for the pins. If I use two the they will be set for all the layout of these drawers.
No going back to rest anything.
After the shoulder points are marked we step off the two pins (starting from the shoulder hole. And then step them off from the other side, once again starting from the shoulder mark.
This gives me the width of the pin. Wider pins we open the dividers up tiny ones we close them a bit.
To give me my layout lines I just put a pen in the tiny divider hole and use a dovetail marker.
For soft woods I use the 6:1 side.
Before I do any sawing I make sure the board is level. Level, not square to my bench. It's not level....
When I saw I do one angle first and then go back and do the other one. I find I am more consistent doing this.
After the sawing most of the waste is removed with a fret saw. The closer one gets to the line, without going by the baseline, the quicker the chiseling is...
Next we lay the tail board level on its side and chop off the shoulder.
Once again the closer we are to the line the quicker the cleanup...
A sharp chisel is used to clean up the shoulder.
And with a bit of cleanup with a 17 degree chisel we have one tail board..
Can't beat a night in the shop and all you hear is the radio.
The next few nights we will do the other 11 tails boards and then go on to the pin boards.
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