HF Dovetail jig question

[Lewis Ehrhardt]

I've got access to a HF DT jig. How hard is it to use these to make dovetails? Long learning curve? I know there are much better systems but money's tight and I can use this one for free? Thanks for any advice I can get. Lewis

[Don Selke]

I bought this jig many years ago on sale for $25.00. After spending about 6 hours trying to set it up and fine tune it for dovetails, I put the thing in the trash can along with the manual. Hope you have better luck and lots of same thickness scrap to practice on. Invest some money and save yourself the aggrivation and time in trying to use it. You would have better luck in hand cutting your dove tails in my opinion. I saved my change and bought the Lee Dovetail jig. Expensive but well worth the investment, it will last my lifetime.

[Bruce Elasik]

If money is tight- check out this template from MLCSwoodworking.com ---- It costs $50 and you get the template , a straight bit, a dovetail bit and a template guide. It takes a bit to get it set up for the first time but after that its done. They have a very nice video on their website that shows how it is set up and used. This is the first dovetail joint ive made with it(pic) in spruce and I was impressed .
http://myweb.cableone.net/bge1/dovetail/dovetail.jpg

[Charles Krieger]

I have the HF dovetail jig and I have made good dovetails with it. You have to experiment and understand how to correct for the problems encountered but it is far too hard to use and the instructions that come with it are useless. It only makes 1/2 blind dovetails with fixed pitch which restricts the widths of the materials to increments of the pitch. Once all the parameters are understood you can make decent dovetails. Good luck.

I now have the Leigh D4R and I'm a happy camper. (about the camper reference: the first thing I made with the Leigh Jig was a box to hold my 40 yr old Coleman camp lantern) I acheived in 30 minutes what had taken 4 hours with the HF.

[Lewis Ehrhardt]

Thanks for the help fellas. Bruce, looks good!

[Rick Huelsbeck]

I had one and it worked great, after I went to shop fox web site and downloaded the instruction manual they sell with theirs. They are exactly the same.