Quick dovetailing questions

[Judson Green]

When you guys gang cut your tails, how many do you do at once?

And, if though dovetails, do you gang cut your pin boards too? Or is that dependant on how good your results are?

[Sean Hughto]

I rarely gang cut node than two tail boards at a time. I would never gang cut pin boards.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

When you guys gang cut your tails, how many do you do at once?

And, if though dovetails, do you gang cut your pin boards too? Or is that dependant on how good your results are?

I've only ever done two boards at once - mostly because I'm only working on one "box" at a time - I suppose if I had multiple drawers of the same size, I could do more than that if the sides were less thick.

I can't think of a good way to gang-cut pin boards - because the cuts aren't perpendicular to the board, at best you'd have radically different sized pins in the two boards. Certainly no way I can think of to gang cut pin boards to match the tail boards if you do those first (which I do).

[Judson Green]

I can't think of a good way to gang-cut pin boards - because the cuts aren't perpendicular to the board, at best you'd have radically different sized pins in the two boards. Certainly no way I can think of to gang cut pin boards to match the tail boards if you do those first (which I do).

Oh yeah, duh! I'm slapping my forehead.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I cut tails first. Off hand, I can't think of a way to gang cut pins.

The answer is.... It depends on the thickness of the stock. How thick do you want to cut while cutting your tails? I know that I have done at least two at a time. I am not sure if I ever tried four or not. Most drawers that I cut I would not really want to cut four layers at once. The more I stack at a time, the more likely something will shift.

[Cody Kemble]

I have only tried two tail boards at a time and I always get horrible results. I have no problem one at a time. I have yet to figure out why.

[Brian Holcombe]

Two tails at a time for me. I worry that four will shift.

[Jim Matthews]

I'm with the consensus, two.

Oddly, I cut straighter with two but the surface furthest from me
tends to be rougher than if I only cut one board.

I'm going to try David Charlesworth's suggestion of keeping a mirror on the bench to watch that side more closely.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I will often cut straighter with two boards. I think that it is because I have a longer reference surface for my marked lines.

[Judson Green]

I figured your chance of having a straighter cut would increase with a longer line.

So, I'm kind of surprise folks aren't sawing a fatter stack. This is my first time making dovetail drawers (two of em, the same size) with hand tools and granted I'm using softwood and thin sides (< ½"), but my first inclination was to stack all four sides.

I feel the results are OK for a first time, needed some paring after the saw and some joints are looser than I'd like, but I feel that's on account of screwing up the pin board not the tails.

[Brian Holcombe]

Judson, FWIW, my dovetails improved tremendously when I started putting heavy knife marks in for the pins. The saw sort of falls into the mark in the first few swipes, then, so long as you are sawing plumb it will be a nice fit. This alone mostly eliminated paring from the sides of the pins, which can quickly turn a friction fit into a loose fit. Now I do not pare unless it's out of square to the point that I can notice it with my eye.

I don't know if this is an issue or not, but when chopping the line on both tails and pins I use chop half way on one side, then flip the board and chop half way from the other. My lines improved by chopping the waste 1/8 ahead of the line, all the way through, then clamping a hefty but well squared board along the line and then chopping the line. It went from ugly looking end grain to clean cut and square end grain.

[Judson Green]

Yeah Brian, the second part of you're reply I've been doing from the start. The first part I've kinda been getting there, was first starting with just a knife line then a "knife notch" - I use this sometimes when cutting tenons.

[Steve Baumgartner]

For a symmetric box such as a drawer, I regularly stack two sides for tail cuts. If there are two identical drawers I usually stack all four sides. It takes some care to get the stack perfectly even (it's a revealing test of how square your end cuts are!), but I've never had a problem with them slipping while being cut. I sometimes put a pair of clamps on to hold the stack together when I align the boards, and leave the clamps there when I put the stack into the vise.

For me, the stack of four is a tradeoff. On the plus side, it is faster than doing two sets of two, and as has been mentioned the longer reference line helps to keep the cuts perpendicular to the faces. On the negative side, a thicker stack means that the saw takes a smaller bite on each stroke, which means more strokes (time) for the cut, and can produce rougher cut surfaces if your arm motion isn't perfectly the same each time. This is especially true if the sides are a hard wood like maple, but less if they are something soft like pine or poplar. A thick stack is a test of whether you saw is well-sharpened!

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I do most of my dovetail cutting with a carcase saw; I just like the feel of that saw better than my dovetail saw; but the 12" length and 12tpi or so also makes cutting wider boards easier; if I was going up to four boards at a time, I might want to reach for something coarser still, but don't think I'd try to tackle it with my little 8", 15tpi dovetail saw.

You know, seems to me if you had a well tuned bandsaw, and maybe some sort of jig to help hold things together, you could gang-cut a whole chest of drawers at once . . .

[Brian Holcombe]

I've been contemplating pretty heavy single bevel knifes for this, in the hopes that I could make an even more significant notch with the knife.