Curved Dovetails

Dave Richards

Member
Messages
2,927
Location
SE Minnesota


I'm thinking about doing a tutorial on how I drew these dovetails. They're graduated in size and spacing and the outside surfaces of the box are curved. I used a graphical way of laying out the joint and ended up with a template that could be printed to transfer the joint to the wood. Would this make people's heads explode or would it be of interest?
 
never hurts to watch,, but after just getting the regular ones done,, i dont see me making these very soon:) but we could use your version of how you done the regular ones, in slow motion..:)
 
Dave

You know making my dove tails sometimes I clicked on the wrong place with the wrong thing a ma jig opened and some times I got one side that looked sorta like that....Are we supposed to be able to repeat that look at will?
 
Dave,

I've been trying your method of laying out the DTs using an arc. I was OK with the seven segments but when I changed it to 28 segments, I get a smooth arc. How do you get the vertex dots on your drawing?
 
Bill, to get the dots you have to do two things. First, explode the curve. Select it, right click and choose Explode curve. Second, go to Window>Styles>Edit and, under the wireframe cube for editing the Line, tick the box for 'End points.' In practice I didn't do that. I just zoomed in enough so I could see the vertices on the curve. I only did it for illustration purposes.
 
Dave, great little thread and 'design, click, build'. I put myself thru the exercise to do the sketchup. But now the real question ... just how would one go about 'making' the real thing? Cut the dovetails in rectangular stock then radius/curve the faces? Looking for comments as I have an idea on where to use this in some drawer constructions. Tx.
 
Thank you, Robert. To answer your question, I guess I would layout and cut the joint on both pieces before rounding their ends. The long grain faces could be profiled ahead. Just leave the stock a little extra long. Once the joints are fitted together, you could trim the ends flush to the sides much as you would do if the pieces were flat.
 
Top