Thread: Machine dovetails better than hand-cut dovetails?

The voting is going a bit slower than I expected for a woodworking forum on this poll so I am just giving the thread a bump.

Does this mean that the number of people who even care about dovetails numbers just a handful for all of Australia and beyond?

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Charleville, I would suggest that part of the reason you are getting a slow response is that the questionairre is a bit confounded. You asked people to judge only the dovetails, but you have presented them with two totally different scenarios. I suspect from reading some of the comments that the audience is ignoring your instruction and judging the pieces, so the bits with contrasting timbers & inlays is getting the nod over some boring drawers & carcases.

You also introduce the ideas of appropriateness as well as aesthetics. The regularly-spaced machine-cut d'tails on your boxes are indeed boring, to me (though they are neat & tight & structurally sound), while the ones cut by hand are far more interesting. But whether they are a) appropriate to the whole design or b) structuurally sound (I personally don't like thin pins on heavy drawers as they are weak & I have seen quite a few of them broken) are different matters, & you would really need to see the whole piece to judge.

Frankly, the arguments of hand cut vs machine cut are largely pointless & unproductive, IMO. Horses for courses. If I were making chests of drawers or any items that needed large numbers of repetitive dovetails for a living, I would certainly be looking for machine help, but if I were making small boxes for fun I would be looking to master hand cutting for the satisfaction and variety it offers.

Through & half-lapped d'tails really aren't that difficult, after all, so I don't know why people make such a fuss about them.

Cheers,

well done hand cut dovetails look nicer - more delicate. You can always tell if they're machine cut, no matter how neat they are.

Originally Posted by IanW

Frankly, the arguments of hand cut vs machine cut are largely pointless & unproductive, IMO. Horses for courses.

Yup. I agree violently with you. What drew me into the original debate was the aggressive passion regarding hand-cut dovetails. Like, is it really such an important issue that people should state that they hate machine cut dovetails more than anything else in woodwork? That falls into the "get a life" category of commentary about what other woodworkers like to do. Us machine cutting knockabout woodies are people too!

Originally Posted by IanW

I would suggest that part of the reason you are getting a slow response is that the questionairre is a bit confounded. You asked people to judge only the dovetails, but you have presented them with two totally different scenarios. I suspect from reading some of the comments that the audience is ignoring your instruction and judging the pieces, so the bits with contrasting timbers & inlays is getting the nod over some boring drawers & carcases.

Maybe so, but, you see, I did not set the rules. I have honored the original challenge to conduct a poll on both sets of dovetails as exhibited. ie my lonely two boxes, the only ones that I have ever made versus what was tabled as fine examples of hand cut craftmanship.

I take my hat off to the blokes who are so skillful as to be able to cut such fine dovetails by hand but even so, my point has been that whether the dovetails are regular spaced dovetails or irregular spaced variable sized dovetails, does not matter to most people.

Further to that, whilst my simple Gifkins jig most usually cuts simple dovetail patterns, my understanding is that a jig like the Leigh jig can offer a lot more flexibility and further, I suggest that it is only a jig design matter to make a jig that could cut almost any format of dovetails.

ie I reiterate my position that a dovetail is a dovetail is a dovetail. There is nothing especially artistic nor creative about the simple dove tail shaped dovetail. Sure the Japanese artist mentioned in my first post above does awesome joints but that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about something that looks like a dovetail, waddles like a dovetail, talks like a dovetail, swims like a dovetail, smells like a dovetail and any other metaphor that we can think of, and is therefore a dovetail.


So unless, woodworker can pull something out of the hat that will make people go, "Wow! Look at that!", we are just talking about minor variations on the same basic joint.

On that basis, one might as well use a machine to cut the things as most people don't care.

So how true is that statement?

I submit that the evidence is pretty well in to prove that point. After four days, the vote count in this poll of highly focussed wood-workers is so low that there is no clear result in favour of one style or the other as I predicted in my closing comments in the post at the top.

Within the next day or so. we might see the votes meander up and down on either of the primary poll choices but the vote is so low that a statistician would say that it is statistically insignificant. It sure ain't in the category of the usually accepted 3 Sigma level of confidence of a convincing vote either way. However, there is an equal chance as evidenced by the vote to date that as many people will say that they do not have a preference in either direction.

Further to that, to date there have been 251 hits on this thread but less than twenty votes cast. Clearly, pretty well no one gives a bugger about dovetails. So why labour the perspective that the only worthwhile dovetail is a hand-cut dovetail? Pretty well no one actually cares.

That perspective is even more pronounced in the poll that I ran to a general population where the vote was a landslide to the machine cut option, no matter what the reason was.

Given that sort of poll response, I am wondering why trade teachers still insist on teaching apprentices to hand cut dovetails. It seems that my taxes are being wasted if we are funding the training of people to learn skills that almost nobody wants.

I might even run a thread on that question. Should we even teach teach the craft of manual dovetail cutting or should it just be left to the people who have a particular interest in maintaining old craft skills?


Nonetheless, good luck to the people who still like to do things the old fashioned way. After all, there is much richness in the tapestry of life when everyone has at least one quirky old uncle in their family. Why should the nieces and nephews of the blokes who like to hand-cut dovetails, or cut their lawns with a scythe, or shave with a cut-throat razor, or make their own soap, or build valve radios etc, be deprived of such a delight?


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Charleville , sorry , mate , but I just voted for the hand-made dovetails...and to think I'm both an angler and a dedicated power tool user....

You see , some time ago I made a piece of furniture that was a bit special , so I decided on dovetails for the drawers , something I ' ve only done a once or twice before, so I used a router (no jig) for the tails , and cut the pins by hand ... lack of experience resulted in some minor mistakes (see pics) .
Well , I think mistakes are there to learn from them , so I decided I needed some more info on dovetails , bought a book , looked at the work people show on the forums.... ...Now my dovetails just look quite ugly to me , and if it were possible , I would dismantle those drawers and do the dovetails again - by hand - just hate the cold , machine-made look of them...

The problem as i see it with this poll is that you are in fact comparing very fine dovetails V chunky dovetails.
Both styles can be done perfectly well either by hand or by machine.
I like machine cut dovetails because i'm lousy with a handsaw & besides, i see no difference in the look between machine & handcut.
IMO the key to making good looking machine cut dovetails is to start with the right sort of dovetail bit. If you use a chunky bit with a 6deg angle then yer they are gonna look chunky - these bits are usually the tungsten carbide bit that we use for pretty much all our routing work. However if you use High Speed Steel bits with a 7deg angle then they are going to be just as delicate, just as elegant at a hand cut dovetail.
HSS bits have their own issues, they need to be sharpened before every use, the really slender bits can snap - been there done that.

PS i voted for pic A because i like the fine delicate dovetails in those pics.
But then having said that i think that the artist used the style of dovetail that was appropriate to the pieces - fine where fine is best, chunky where chunky looks good.

Rattrap;

Many thanks for your very thoughtful comments. I especially like your reasoned explanations.

Very much appreciated.



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Originally Posted by Artesano

Charleville , sorry , mate , but I just voted for the hand-made dovetails...and to think I'm both an angler and a dedicated power tool user....

Thanks Mate. I appreciate your voting, whatever the result.


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Appreciate the test Charleville, but agree with IanW: have to compare apples with apples.

I can't make hand made dovetails full stop. So both look OK to me but voted for B purely because they look more symmetrical.

In this particular comparison I am voting for the hand cut ones because the dovetails on the little boxes look a bit "busy". This is a reflection of my peraonal taste in this particular comparison. I use a Gifkins quite a lot - and it is a bit more versatile with spacers than it is given credit for. Moreover, the range of templates catering for different sizes of dovetails also adds to its versatility. I think I would need to get some Japanese saws to do good, jewellry box size, dovetails by hand.

I prefer B, because I'm not a craftsman.

Let me explain.

I used to be a very skilled hand compositor. This some one who puts together the printed page using individual letters.

Now to me, 99% I see of printed matter these days is not of craftsman quality. But do people care? No. Is there a place for "the old ways" in printing. No.

Some elements of craftmanship can only be appreciated by the craftsmen themselves. When a musician listens to music they listen for different things than your average punter. The listen for different things than an audiophile even. So to them a beautiful piece of music may just not have anything for the average joe.

I'm probably not making much sense so I iwll stop now.

Originally Posted by Wongdai

I'm probably not making much sense so I iwll stop now.

You are making infinite sense, Wongdai.

Many thanks for your contribution.


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No preference took my vote. Having said that I stronly agree with the sentiment that both have their place, determined by the required application and intended outcome.