??? on using a dovetail jig

[JR]

I've had a couple hours of shop time so far with my dovetail jig. I'm not having a lot of success so far. In fact, I'd say it's the most finicky tool I've ever used! So, who's got some tips for me?

• Setting the clamp-down tension seems tricky. Too much pressure and the template bows. Too little and the wood moves. Has anyone glued sandpaper to the clamp mechanism? Any other ideas?
• Maybe it's the lighing in my shop, but the only way to get a good view of the cutting action is to stoop down and view it from below. This results in a massive face full of wood chips. How do you do it?
• It's really hard to keep my fixed-base router flat on the template. It seems to want to rock as I move it through. How do you keep this from happening?

Any other tips and ideas will be gratefully accepted!

TIA,
JR

[Ken Massingale]

Not to sound like a smarta$$, but the only answer I have is practice, practice and practice. Having said that, I still suffer from the face-full-O-chips.
ken

[LCHIEN]

yes, some sandpaper will help the clamping.

The beauty of using a template is you don't need to actually view the routing. That took some getting used to for me but it actually works well. One secret is to not try and rout every single finger fully at a time or even in one pass.

What you need to do is take small bites and several passes so you never take too much at once. It takes a bit of practice and feel but here's how you do it: take the first pass more or less straight across pretty quickly, not pushing real hard. this will take a thin layer off and do the initial undercutting. Take a successive pass removing more material until you can start to feel the fingers of the guide. Now you can go a little slower on the next pass, simply pushing the router gently into every finger you feel as you pass, push it in until it stops, then pull out and follow the finger to the next slot. Don't worry if you miss a little in any finger. After you cut all the slots, make another clean up pass, you should feel no resistance to speak of, if you hear material being cut (that ZZZZT sound), do it again until you hear nothing more being cut which means you have now cut it all. It can all be done simply by feeling and not by looking at all, looking is only to find the first and last slots. You can't cut too much because of the template.

Now that you are not watching the bit cutting, you can pay more attention to the top and make sure you keep the router base flat on the guide template, since the router is almost balanced half on and half off, you just need to provide a little forward force just enough to rotate the router weight forward but not tilt the router up.

Good luck, enjoy your DT jig. You should be able to whiz thru dovetails with a little practice and the longest things will be the setup and cleanup.

[Greg.B]

Face full of chips is my problem as well, last time I was down there was a mask, goggles, hood, and the chips were still everywhere...lol...

[Ken Massingale]

As usual Loring provided more useful info than me, but I did forget one thing.
Watch for sawdust buildup in the ends of the slots. It just takes a small amount of dust stuck at the end to make a joint not fit just right.
k

[AlanJ]

What Loring said.

I have a Rockler jig and got good results first time out - and I never even thought of trying to watch the routing. Trust the template to guide you. Never had a problem with the clamping tension either... but it sounds like your jig is different to mine. IIRC the template on my jig is not clamped down: there is a steel bar that clamps the top piece down.
One trick I learned was that if the stock is less than half the width of the jig, I use a second piece of same sized stock on the other side (vertical), to help with even clamping. This might help for you on the top piece as well as the vertical piece.

[scorrpio]

Latest WOOD magazine has good info on troubleshooting the dovetails.

Oh, if your wooden parts are significantly narrower than the jig (i.e. trying to work 4" wide parts on a 12" jig), You should clamp them on one side of jig, and clamp some stock as thick as your work on the other side of jig in order to provide proper support for clamp and prevent racking.

[Wood_workur]

Latest WOOD magazine has good info on troubleshooting the dovetails.

Oh, if your wooden parts are significantly narrower than the jig (i.e. trying to work 4" wide parts on a 12" jig), You should clamp them on one side of jig, and clamp some stock as thick as your work on the other side of jig in order to provide proper support for clamp and prevent racking.

Scorrpio beat me to the punch line. Sandpaper is good, ans Wood reccomend puting the jig up on a stand to clamp to your bench, to allow better visibilty, but Loring's idea ounds better.

[LCHIEN]

I also second the suggestion someone else had to put a like-thickness block of wood underneath the right side of the template to support the template when clamping. This will partially solve 2 problems,
where the wood shifts because you can't clamp down hard on the right side and also will support the weight of the router better when working on the right end of the piece.

[JR]

Some great suggestions!

Thanks, guys. Keep 'em coming.

I especially like the one about using a same-size boad on the other side. That seems to make a lot of sense.

I'll have to work on Master Loring's zen approach to router handling, though.

JR

[RHunter]

The face full of chips seems to be a pattern here. I have the same problem- I gave up and accepted it as the norm- and now wear a face shield when using my HF DT Jig...

[AlanJ]

The face full of chips seems to be a pattern here. I have the same problem- I gave up and accepted it as the norm- and now wear a face shield when using my HF DT Jig...

I don't understand this phenomenon.. I get chips all over my waist. I guess I'm a bit taller than some

[JR]

Thanks for all the advice, everyone. I finally got a good joint tonight after some more practice.

Master Loring's multiple-pass advice worked wonders. I took deep breaths, thought good thougts, kept my shoulders square, and used the "ready" stance. Of course it helped that i finally "got it" on the various adjustments after another half-dozen tries. For a while there I felt like the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy first discovers him - turning wheels, pulling levers, and shouting into a microphone.

I used some wider 6" stock and that made a big difference on the clamping. I have an idea that requires 3" stock for which I will definitely add the second "dummy" piece and probably sandpaper as well.

JR

[LarryG]

A few more little things, from a fellow tyro.

Like you I'm just starting down Dovetail Road myself, but a few things I've already learned with my new setup that I don't think anyone has mentioned:

1. A clear plastic base plate on the router helps visibility tremendously and reduces the urge to squat down and watch. Even so, as others have said, you mostly work by feel.

2. Start with a right-to-left pass; i.e., a climb cut, to minimize tear-out.

3. Tearout on the back side of the vertical board at the last finger is highly likely since the pin board is offset from the tail board. To prevent it, clamp a scrap piece alongside the horizontal board, to backup the vertical board at the last pin.

And oh yeah:

4. Practicing on MDF, because it's dirt cheap, is a good idea in theory but the results are so poor as to make the exercise almost meaningless, and you got it, DAMHIKT.

[LCHIEN]

...
4. Practicing on MDF, because it's dirt cheap, is a good idea in theory but the results are so poor as to make the exercise almost meaningless, and you got it, DAMHIKT.

when I started, I practiced on the ends of "whitewood" 1x4's.
You can cut off about two 2-foot lengths, rout the joints in the end,
cut off the last 2 inches,
glue-up the mating joint (put a "try #" number on it).
You can do this about 10 times and see the improvements as you go.
and end up with 10 sets of joints.
All for about $2 of wood (a 4-ft 1x4) and an afternoons time.