Thread: Chris Vesper Dovetail Challenge Photos

Hi All,

Chris, as promised, here's something to get the ball rolling. Thursday got busy, cut them tonight.

Here's the first dovetails that I'd cut in a couple of years, off the saw.

With glue, they'd tighten up nicely. A set of through dovetails would be a lot easier to cut this size (timber approx 2.5mm thick.) The inside of the joint is tight, no overrun of saw cuts from cutting the tail sockets, uniform basellne.
There's no gaps in the pins, the black line is an artefact from the scanner. I did cut on the baseline on one of the half pins, there's a tiny gap there.

I'm sure that someone else can do better. They take just as long as a normal set to cut. No longer.

Tools used are in one photo. The 'big' chisel is a 1/8" chisel. The small one is a 1/16", the homemade one is a 0.5mm blade from a hand hacksaw. The marking knife is an old power hacksaw blade.

The only tool not in the photo that was used was a cutting gauge and an old sliding bevel.

Working with a head torch, I remembered why I hate modelmaking.

Post your results below

CHeers,

eddie

edit: Spot the dumb apprentice-like mistake in some of these. I realised just as I was about to cut, but went ahead and cut a set anyway to see how well the timber worked. (There's two different sets here, the lap dovetails are cut properly)

edit II: I'm professionally trained. As such, I wasn't expecting a prize, but to make it clear, I'll disqualify myself from prizes. This was done to kick things along and just to let you know it's possible and as easy to cut as a normal dovetail. (even easier, all paring, not mallet required.)

Regrind a hacksaw blade to use as a chisel for the pins. (small thing in the middle of the other two chisels with a masking tape handle.)

Good luck - I'd like to see a few samples for the prize from Chris.

A paddlepop stick would be a good place to start.