dovetails and the porter cable 4210 jig

[rudy de haas]

I have never done dovetails... and need to make two small (5.5" wide, 8.25" long, 3.25" high) drawers to go into a hole in a wall I've wallpapered with baltic birch plywood.

To make the things as useful as possible, I'm using fairly thin maple - a bit under 3/8th for the sides and bottoms, and 1/2" baltic birch for the fronts so they disappear into that wall. Among other things this means that the fronts are about 1/2" higher than the sidewalls.

To help I bought the porter-cable 4210 jig set - and not from a garage sale, i had to pay retail for the thing. And, of course, my wood is a bit too thin for use with the kit as it comes but I'm too cheap to go out and buy more accessories for it.

So, first: because the fronts and backs are short, I'm putting longer pieces in beside them on top of the jig to hold them in place (see photo). Is there a better way?

Second: it should come with something to help beginners center the vertical piece under the teeth. I'm getting some self-adhesive tape to put on a sheet I can insert for this (a better approach than the ruler shown in the photo). Is there a better way? (I have caliphers, they don't fit..)

Third: the things on the left and right that you push up against the vertical wood once you have it centered aren't necessarily plumb - so if your vertical wood leans left or right, you don't find out until you try to bring the top piece up to it and the comb itself down, and even then you may not notice a small problem (I didn't the the first time). This should have a built in bubble, but it doesn't so.. is there a replacement part? a better way?

[scott vroom]

I believe your third comment references the offset guides. Good luck with those. Both guides on my jig are out of spec and I have to use a feeler gauge every setup to get the proper offset. I don't believe the guides are machined and instead are stamped metal...just crap quality. PC tech support was in denial...if I didn't know better I'd suspect they were well aware of the problem but weren't going to admit it.

I discovered the problem after noticing that my drawer pieces were misaligned when assembled. Make sure you do test runs to make sure you don't have a similar issue.

Other than the offset guide problem the jig works reasonably well for the price.

[rudy de haas]

I

I discovered the problem after noticing that my drawer pieces were misaligned when assembled..

Me too - but my offset guides are correct, they just hang crooked if the board isn't put in plumb and the vertical plus horizontal error this introduces causes the misalignment you discover when you try to put the fourth corner together. As I said, it needs a built in bubble (a bit longer wouldn't hurt either)

[Ted Reischl]

A built in bubble? Nah.

For the bubble to work the jig would have to be on a level surface to begin with. Having a bubble would cause more problems than it would solve. "Oh, my bubble is level, but my dovetails are way, way off!"

I have had this jig for about 8 years now. Never had a bit of problem with it and I have made about a hundred drawers with it. Without any of the problems you wrote about. It seems to me that right to left centering is not all that critical IF you have labeled your parts.

Tell me, you used a machinists level to level your bench perfectly, yanno, one of those that cost about $500???

Not sure what is going on with your vertical guides, mine have never been a problem.

It seems to me, and it has been a few months since I used this jig....that you bring the template down to top surface of your stock. Then you align the vertical guides to the template or the bottom of your stock with a square. I am still not sure what you think a bubble level will do for you because it would be easy to level the template to the universe but the base could easily be at an angle to the template.

Maybe, just maybe, since you just bought it you need to back up, and figure out how it works. Here is something I do when I am having problems, I look at the reviews again....

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Notice that 87% of the folks gave it at least a 4 star rating. Out of 90 people that means 78 people are happy with it. They would not give it at least a 4 star review if it were a piece of junk. I am not trying to pull your chain....the way I think of things is "if 78 people out of 90 could figure out how to use the jig and are happy with it, then I have some work to do!"

Edit: Ooops, 86 per cent, not 87 per cent.

[scott vroom]

Ted, has it occurred to you that some of the jigs ship with out of spec alignment guides? Your argument that 86% favorable reviews means that the product never ships with defective parts is flawed.

If you had bothered to read the unfavorable reviews, you'd find others with the same vertical guide issue.

[Bob Potter]

Rudy have you tried to look up some video's on the enter net? There are a few on you tube that give you step by step instructions.
Hope this helps, Bob

[rudy de haas]

Rudy have you tried to look up some video's on the enter net? There are a few on you tube that give you step by step instructions.
Hope this helps, Bob

Of course - and I did get my done. The question is whether there are better options that the work-arounds I used.

[Ted Reischl]

Ted, has it occurred to you that some of the jigs ship with out of spec alignment guides? Your argument that 86% favorable reviews means that the product never ships with defective parts is flawed.

If you had bothered to read the unfavorable reviews, you'd find others with the same vertical guide issue.

If YOU had bothered to read the unfavorable reviews YOU would not have wrote what YOU did. There was not one review in which a buyer indicated that some part, nevermind the offset guides, was out of spec that I could find.

I have read the OP's original post several times. It is full of problems. Stock that he thinks is too thin. Parts that are too short to be clamped. First time he has tried to cut dovetails.

There is no such thing as a "vertical alignment guide", nor are there "alignment guides". Only offset guides. From your earlier post you obviously think that offset distance between the two edges are incorrect. You write that the parts are defective. They do not grind or machine those offsets by hand. They are either stamped out or laser cut. My guess is stamped without pulling them off and looking at them closely. I highly doubt that a die changes the edge offset since I worked in the tool and die industry.

You know the old saying "A poor craftsman blames his tools".

IF your offset guides are in fact "out of spec" then you could do a couple of things. Replace them, parts are available from PC. Or you could carefully file the edges until they were "in spec". But there is a problem, you write about them being "out of spec" but actually there is no published "spec" on those parts. So how would you know they are out of spec? Just based on your results which depends on a lot of other factors. Such as, consistency of material being used. How well you actually locate the parts in the jig, etc.

[Ted Reischl]

Rudy, when you start with stock that is too short there are going to be some "work arounds".

As for you stock being too thin. . . I have done stock down to 1/4 thick. The specs state:

"

• Accommodates stock from 1/4" to 1-1/8" thick"

The trick to using this jig is to make darn sure that the template is sitting flat on the horizontal board, All the way across. The guides on the side are not for "vertical alignment", they are "offset guides". All you need to do is bump up against them.

To use this jig what I do is get the template adjusted as mentioned above.

Then remove the horizontal piece.

Place a board in the vertical position. Move the template back and forth until the scribe line is lined up as good as you can get with the edge of the board.

Always, ALWAYS put the vertical board in first, push it upwards against the template. Move it sideways until it bumps the offset guide. Clamp it down.

Put in the horizontal piece. Push it forward until it contacts the vertical board. Slide it sideways against the offset guide. Clamp it down.

Make sure the pieces are against the template and that there are no gaps between the edges of the two boards where they meet. If the stock is cupped you will get lousy dovetails. If the stock varies in thickness you will get lousy dovetails. If your router bit is dull it will cause the horizontal board to move.

Always mark the inside corners of the box so you cut the joints in the proper sequence and can assemble them in the sequence they were cut.

Hope that helps you out in the future.

Setup on this jig is not just a matter of tossing the boards in and away you go. It is an ADJUSTABLE jig. Adjustable things always need, well, adjustment. But being adjustable also means you do not have to have perfectly milled stock. All that is required is that the stock is consistent. If all your boards are 1/32 too thick, it will not matter, you just adjust the height of the template to suit.

Notice that they do not sell this jig as "plug n play".

Oh yea, one other thing, the ends of the stock must be square. If they are a little out of square you will not notice it while cutting the dovetails. But you will sure as heck notice it when you try to assemble. Cuts out of square cause the box to be twisted.

[scott vroom]

If YOU had bothered to read the unfavorable reviews YOU would not have wrote what YOU did. There was not one review in which a buyer indicated that some part, nevermind the offset guides, was out of spec that I could find.

From Amazon:

"I would rate this a 5 except for the alignment issues. Porter Cable should be embarrassed selling a tool that does not properly align the dovetails due to a simple stamped piece of metal. I messed around for a while then finally took both the left and right alignment pieces off the unit. I could see the left side was bent at the wrong angle. I did not want to mess with spacers or as another person suggested using a feeler gauge to align drawer parts. I spent time bending the part and testing until I was satisfied. I would not accept this from a low end dealer or a cut rate tool why should it be OK for Porter Cable. I own several other Porter Cable tools and have not seen this sloppy workmanship."

"I was having a hard time getting it to produce a good half blind DT. Gave up after 2.5 hours and several feet of wood. Came back the next day looking for why and found the left offset guide was bad. The offset guide keeps the tail (vertical) board 1/2" to the right of the pin (horizontal) board. The two guide edges were not parrallel. A few wacks with a hammer in a metal vice got it close. Some masking tape took care of the rest. PC says the part is on backorder till JUNE!!! I have to wait 6 months to get a critical part?"

[Bill Berklich]

I've got one - works perfect every time for box, blind and though dovetails. I've never tried 1/4" but 3"8"-1" work perfect. Finicky but less than my Leigh - GREAT piece of equipment. I abandon the Leigh because I was just too complex to set up but the Leigh is rock solid. I do not do variably spaced tails and I don't have the patience to cut 50-100+ like Chris Swarz (he has the patience of Job) so I'm in for fast and easy.

Absolutely, do several test cuts and adjust (Just like any other tool) Good Luck!

[Ted Reischl]

Scott, I have still not found the review you are quoting. I looked through the entire list three times.

At any rate, no matter what product is sold, someone, somewhere is going to gripe, whine, complain and snivel. The reviews for this product are overwhelmingly good. If they had reviews for Rolls Royce someone would whine about something and state that something was not within specs...blah, blah, blah.

[Mike Cutler]

Rudy

I own this jig also and it does a pretty good job, but I also had some of the same issues. I corrected the offsets by lightly machine them and setting them plumb to the template. I never move that part any longer. If I need to create a a different offset for the first pin/tail. I make a spacer and sticky taper it to the offset.
It is a somewhat finicky little jig and getting it set is a bit of trial and error. It also helps exponentially to have two routers dedicated to it, so as to avoid changing bits and going through the setting process each time a bit is changed. Once it is setup though, it's pretty nice and you can crank out some dovetails. Th biggest problem I have is that clamping bar for the vertical piece. Sometimes the piece would slip down, so I solved that by gluing a piece of 400grit sandpaper to the front. I was making some fairly big drawers though and the weight of that piece was probably too much for the clamp to hold securely
There used to be an addendum available online, maybe there still is, to the instruction manual that was leaps and bounds better than the manual that comes in the box. Why Porter Cable just didn't include it in the manual to begin with is a mystery to me. That addendum will cover what you are/were trying to accomplish.

[rudy de haas]

. The guides on the side are not for "vertical alignment", they are "offset guides". All you need to do is bump up against them.

Yes for all of this except the bit quoted above.

The offset guides are held in place by a single screw on the front. Loosen it, move the guide against the vertical wood, and then tighten the screw, right? If the vertical piece of wood is not at right angles to the top comb, the guide ends up set off plumb and so the horizontal part of the guide cannot be at right angles to the front of the comb either. This means that your two pieces of wood seem to line up - it's only when you look closely that you see the edges where the two boards touch don't line up properly with the guide marks on the comb teeth.. The first time out I didn't notice, and so my corners didn't work.

I am not blaming the jig for this - it was my fault. However, what I am doing is asking for advice on better ways to work around these issues and suggesting that Porter Cable could make the tool better by providing better solutions: e.g. a measuring guide for centering your wood and an alignment/offset guide with a bubble to make going wrong harder.

[scott vroom]

I set up my 4210 jig this morning and ran 2 tests: one test using the left side offset guide, and another using the right side offset guide. All test pieces were cut from a single board, and all crosscuts were checked both directions for square. The dovetail cuts using the left side offset guide yielded misaligned drawer sides, the misalignment being about the thickness of a utility knife blade (not the sharp edge). The setup was executed correctly. I repeated the process using the right side offset guide and the result was a near perfect alignment of the 4 drawer pieces. I then measured each of the 2 offset guides and noticed that the left guide was about 1/32 wider than the right guide. I confirmed the difference by placing both guides on edge on a dead flat surface and setting a torpedo level across them. The 2 guides were noticeably out of level with each other, confirming my measurements.

I called the service center and they're shipping a new left side guide and told me that if the new guide is also out of spec they'll send another until the problem is resolved.

I don't know if the OP's issue is setup related or due to an out of spec offset guide but I thought it might be helpful to share my experience.