Quote Originally Posted by woodPixel View Post
....... I've been thinking about this. The hidden art of this method is its only the outside of the mitre that needs to match. If the DTs are too "long" they can be just trimmed back. This can be done with a plane on a shooting board. I think "we think" it needs to be 100% perfect inside. Its does not. Whereas an exterior, seen, DT needs perfection (because you'll see every gap) the hidden interior one of a mitred DT can be as rough as guts. If you get close enough most of the time, its is just as good as one that is perfect. It is only the artist who will ever see it.......
Dunno about "rough as guts", WP, I imagine you do want the thing to stay together? While a few gaps won't detract significantly from the joint strength, I would definitely want most of my pins & tails to fit closely. It seems to me that of the dovetailed joints I've seen let go, the vast majority were a sloppy fit. I don't think any glue should be relied on to fill voids when joint-strength is a major consideration. I watched the relevant part of the video & it looked to me like the bloke was cutting those pins pretty accurately - practised hands can make some things look like child's play that we who are less-skilled struggle with, after all.

I'm talking from very limited experience, and it is quite a while since I did the last set, but as I remember it, cutting the pins & tails wasn't much more difficult than doing 'ordinary' half-blind d/ts, just a bit more tedious because neither pins not tails are 'through' & both have to be part-sawn, part chiselled out. Transferring the pin marks off the tails was trickier, because of the more restricted access for a marking tool. In situations like that, I use this half-knife, half scratch-awl ground from an old 3-cornered file rather than a marking knife: Scratch awl mod.jpg

You can only do a partial dry fit until the mitres are trimmed. If you've got a few sets of half-blinds under your belt, you will have some feel for that. I didn't want to trim the mitres while I was chopping the pins & tails because the sharp corners would be too easy to damage, but you can pare away a bit, to give you a better view of things. The most challenging part for me was the final trimming of those narrow mitered edges, all of which have to be near-perfect or it will spoil the job. I did most of it with a paring chisel, then I used a shoulder plane (very slowly & carefully) to true the last few thous across the mitres 'til it all fitted seamlessly. You have to sneak up very carefully on the final bit - if you over-shoot, there is virtually no fix other than starting over.

This is the result of one of my efforts - as you can see, it's quite small (~350mm on the long side), but it's the most ambitious set of full-blinds I've tackled so far! Box2.jpg Box1.jpg

Cheers,