sliding dovetails - how to

[EMistral]

Hi all,

I am currently making a kitchen cabinet which is 2.2m long x 1.1m wide.
I have front top and bottom rails and the top rail are designed in such a way that the drawers are cut within the board to keep the timber pattern continuous.
Therefore I need to add some strength.
I intend to connect the top rails with stiles using sliding dovetails.
Taking into consideration the fact that the rails are long (2m), what would be the best method for sliding dovetails?
The front top rails are 16cm wide and there will be a stile with sliding dovetails every 50cm roughly (3 stiles of 1m long x 16cm wide).
I would feel more comfortable using the router table where I lock the router bit to a specific height and route the slots then move on to the tails while keeping the same height
my main issue is to route the tails. After reading on the net, I have found that you go bit by bit, moving the cutter a little bit at the time until it fits.
But how would you keep the stile steady? would you need a jig, or enclose the stile between boards to increase the surface on the router table, etc...?
I tried once and it was a disaster :)
thanks

[Luddite]

Emistral,

There is a really useful book called "Jigs and Fixtures for the table saw and router" published by Fox Chapel (ISBN 978-1-56523-325-6). They have a simple system for sliding dovetails with a router.

If you can gain access to this book I can recommend it. If you cant find it perhaps you could pm me you email address and I will scan it for you.

Regards,

Anthony

[IanW]

EMistral - this is the jig I use for cutting tails - came from a very old edition of FWW. It's about as basic as you can get, but works well enough. I hope the pic is self-explanatory. The board to be 'tailed' is clamped flat on the bench & you move the rig across the end, then flip the board over to cut the other side. Once you sneak up on the fence adjustment, the tails can be cut in two single passes. With a decent small router (~1000W is good, not too clumsy) it's quite easy to hold it firmly against the end of the board & cut a perfect tail. The main trick is to cut "uphill" - which means you need to hang onto the router to prevent self-feeding, but you get much less chipping of the sholders than if you cut "downhill". The other important thing is to have all the boards exactly the same thickness, of course!

I cut the housing with the jig base attached, so that I don't have to fiddle with depth adjustment of the cutter. It means tail & housing are exactly the same depth, so I usually plane a couple of very fine shavings off the bottom. If your tail is accurately cut, it won't affect the firmness of the fit, but it certainly eases assembly.

Cheers,

[EMistral]

Hi all,


Thanks for your answer.
Having bought a incra super system recently that came with the wonder fence and riser for long board support, I gave it a try last night.
With a couple of helping guides on the net and the micro adjusting fixture on the incra, I have managed the cut perfect matching tails.
Just need to cut the slots now but the router being locked at the same height than the tails, it will be straight forward (hope so)