Thread: dovetails

Originally Posted by Farm boy

Hi guys
i want to make a 4 sided tray to rest my wine keg on and would like to dovetail each corner for a bit of practice.
the wood i am going to use is 200mm x 50mm treated pine sleepers.
how do i get the corect angle for the dovetail ?
reading some info on dovetails it sugests 1.8 ratio?,do you divide 200mm x 1.8 to get the corect angle for the dovtail to set your bevel guage too
best wishes
greg

G'day Greg,

I'm pretty new at this, so am hardly the most authoritative source, but to get the fight angles, generally 1:6 for softwoods and 1:8 for hardwoods (most rounter are the latter), you can either:

1. buy a DT guide (eg from Veritas who have two versions, each of which can be bought either singly or as a pair of 1:6 and 1:8; both versions which work quite well, but actually the cheaper one is easier), or

2. Lay out a line 6 units long (inches, CMs, length of your forearm (Cubit!) or whatever, and another line 90 deg to it at its base 1 unit long (think of an 'L' shape), and mark a line that intersects the two at the top and right (i.e. a hypotenuse). All you have to do then is set your sliding bevel square to that hypotenuse, and voila!

You'll also need a pretty rigid >15tpi fine kerf saw (a small(ish) Dozuki Japanse pull saw would be good, a PAX DT saw better, a LV DT saw better still and a LN DT saw pure heaven, plus a couple of decent bevel edge chisels with a razor sharp edge. A marking knife and a marking gauge would also be helpful.

Cheers!

hi greg ,
dont know if im right or not (maths is not my strong point!)
mark the bottom of a piece of wood or paper 6" out then up 1" join these two points and you have a 1in 6 ratio. I THINK!
hope it works out for you , must be a bloody big keg !
seeyasoon mik.

Gidday Farmboy

Darth Cowen Got a great thread going on hand Dovetail Aids here:

http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...+dovetail+aids

Also there are some really good How To Articles on the WWW some of the Better ones are here:

http://home.nj.rr.com/afoust/dovetails.html

http://pages.friendlycity.net/~krucker/Dovetail/dovetailjoints.htm

For me crafting dovetails by hand is a precision exercise in marking and cutting out. There are a number of approaches to Hand making Dovetails all of which have their Merits and disadvantages.

My suggestion is pick a system that works for you its important that it feels right and suits your style of doing things. To do this have a good read and try a number of approaches.............. you'll find that one approach will seem to feel better than the others!!!!

Once you've found your match Practice Practice Practice & then practice some more....................eventually the results will be worth it!!! I can't express in words the feeling of getting your first set a dovies right.............ITS Awesome!!!!

My favourate tools when Dovetailing are as follows:

1. Incra MarkingRule & Mechanical Pencil 300mm http://www.woodpeckers.com.au/category26_1.htm

2. Veritas saddle square style DoveTail Markers in 1:8 & 1:6
http://svc010.bne011i.server-web.com....html?cache=no

3. A good Marking Knife
http://www.timbecon.com.au/products/...ols-321_1.aspx

And a set of really Sharp Chisels!!!........As with most things theres no right or wrong ...................... Just what works for you!!!

........Hope this helps

Regards lou

Set your bevel gauge to 8 degrees off 90 and you'll be near enough.

What the others said with emphasis on practice and sharp chisels.

As Lou said, it is a good feeling when you make one that is reasonable after putting in the effort.

As Steve mentioned, a marking gauge is very important.

The angles are generally 1:6 for softwoods and 1:8 for hardwoods but these can be varied a little bit but not too much.

Make a few trial dovetails on scrap pine so you can see how they fit together which will help you when you do the real one. There will be a few disasters on the way but this is very normal.

At first you tend to get tangled up in the details of angles and what to cut first and the spacing ..... many people get confused at this point and give up. Like most things, after doing a few you wonder how you possibly could have been confused!

Good luck, you have achieved the hardest part already by being prepared to give them a go.

Originally Posted by Wood Borer

What the others said

what everybody else said

Make a few trial dovetails on scrap pine

Yeah: do some practice, but be aware that pine is a bugger to chisel: it tends to crumble rather than cut. Just about anything else will be easier to practice on than pine. Most hardware shops sell meranti or durian that is fairly cheap (look in their offcuts bin), these will be easier to cut with a chisel.

Even a bit of MDF would be OK if it's your very first go at a dovetail. Just do one tail on one piece (of say 19 x 42) and the two 'half'-pins on the other piece so you can get familiar with the shapes and how they fit together.

Another hint: make sure that the pieces you start with are really true and square. If not, the end result will be crap no matter how accurately you mark, cut etc.

Good luck.

PS: not sure about the wisdom of using treated pine for your keg tray. Doesn't treated pine give off poisonous fumes? Don't really want this if it's going to be in the house, near food, etc.?

Just in case it got lost in all the enthusiasm

A ratio of 1:8 means that for every unit of measurement along the x axis there is a change of 8 units in the y axis.

A very simple way to set you bevel gauge is to take your roofing square (you have one of these, don't you?), hold the base of your bevel gauge on the short arm and line the sliding part up so that it forms a line between 10mm on the short arm and 80mm on the long arm.

If you don't have a roofing square and the hardware shop is closed, you can do as a couple of the other guys suggested and draw two lines at 90 degrees to each other, mark 1cm along one line and 8cm on the other, connect the two points and set your bevel guage off that.

This will give you the magical 1:8 ratio. By coincidence, this is as near as you like to 82 degrees, or 8 degrees off 90.

You don't need to buy or make any fancy guides etc. unless you are planning to do a lot of them. Test the water with your toe first.

so many ways..... eh.

Dozuki Japanse pull saw would be good <- one of these I reakon are fine. (not the smallest one though I think, Medium one's probably more useful) Just use it for pine. You'll probably get hooked on the pull saw thing almost immediatly. Just make sure you establish a shallow cut right on you line on all 3 sides of each cut before you finish or else the blade can wonder about.

Focus heavily on each saw cut....
With pine, being softer, to get a nicer fit make your pins and tails a little larger. Its more accomidating than hard wood........

good luck

Originally Posted by zenwood

Even a bit of MDF would be OK if it's your very first go at a dovetail. Just do one tail on one piece (of say 19 x 42) and the two 'half'-pins on the other piece so you can get familiar with the shapes and how they fit together.

I have never cut a dovetail using MDF.

I would not use my chisels and saw on MDF as it is tough on tools.

Originally Posted by apricotripper

With pine, being softer, to get a nicer fit make your pins and tails a little larger. Its more accomidating than hard wood........

I have made quite a few dovetails using radiata and although the fibres can crush, this is minimised if the chisel is sharp and you take small pieces at a time.

Softwoods are far more forgiving than hardwoods. The crushing on the pine can work to your advantage as suggested by Jake in that you can see where the fit is a bit tight.

With hardwood the joint will not fit unless everything is spot on or the joint is sloppy. If only one tail is too tight then the joint will not fit but it is sometimes difficult to decide which tail is pinching.

So practice with softwoods would be my advice and then graduate to hardwoods.

thanks for all your replys

the only reason i am using treated pine sleepers for my base is i have a spare sleeper in the shed and thought it would be ideal.
have you gentleman got any suggestions on other types of wood to use?
i wont be making my wine until next grape season around february so i have some time up my sleeve.
my barrel holds about 350 kg of grapes it is a big bugger which makes about 300 to 350 litres of wine.
aswell as dovetailing the corners i am going to brace it with corner supports on the inside and have 4 heavy duty castors underneath so i can manouver the barrel around if needed, it seems like a bit of overkill but i dont want my barrell shattering the base and spilling all that lovelly shiraz
cheers
greg

Probably at risk of stating the obvious.

You are going to true your timber first before you dovetail arn't you ? Just get the impression that if your new to dovetailing you may not be in tune with just how important trued timber is to your chances of success.

Realistically, unfortuneatly the only way to get nice gap free tight dovetails, like any joint, is to eliminate all the possible problems. There are forgiving aspects, but mostly all it takes is one problem to stuff it up. The first concern I reakon is to true your timber, then think about the rest of them.

don't mean to kill any enthusiasm, or unwittingly impley anything that upsets.

Goodluck with it.

the more red wine i have the truer the wood looks

Originally Posted by Farm boy

the more red wine i have the truer the wood looks

Absolutely, you've just discovered the secret to making "nice gap free tight dovetails" . I should have written " have a bottle of wine FIRST " then decide on whether or not you should true your timber.......

(sip, sip, spill) ....aww....shhhheeeeul be right !!!