Finishing Up Half Blind
Yesterday allowed me a bit of time to get into the shop to work on the last of three drawers for a cabinet that has been in progress for quite a while.
There are various ways to ensure squareness when cutting various joints. Here is one way that works for me:
Joint Alignment Inside Square.jpg
This is a shop made inside square for aligning components. A try square or framing square are among other ways of keeping things square.
Here are the pins cut for the piece across the back of the drawer:
Through Pins Cut.jpg
This was marked from the tail board with a knife. Later a sharp pencil was used to darken the lines. One important part of making dovetails is to saw to the line, not though the line. The line is fully inside the area to be kept. One of my problems with using a pencil to trace the tails is there is usually a hair of offset at the point.
My orientation marks can be seen in this image. The L means it is the left side. My orientation for marking is from the front view of the completed piece. The arrow indicates up. If an arrow indicates anything other than up a note accompanies it.
Most of the waste was removed with a fret saw. For many years my waste removal was through chopping with chisels. Since getting a quality fret saw it has been easier to saw most of the waste then pare to the line.
A pair of skew chisels comes in handy to trim to the base line:
Skew Chisel.jpg
Here a chamfer is being made at the edge of the socket. This helps to prevent blow out when paring out the waste. A skew chisel is also helpful to clean up the corners at the base of pins and tails. For me it is almost impossible to make half blind dovetails without a skewed or fishtail chisel.
What is that old saying, “trust but verify?” It may be awhile before my ability to have dovetails fit right of the saw is trusted:
Check Fit.jpg
After getting both sides of the back piece to fit it is on to the front of the drawer:
Front Left.jpg
This is how the joint can be put together to hide the through plowed slot for the drawer bottom. If these were through dovetails the slot would have to be below the bottom tail.
This is also the first project for me to have an opportunity to use Ron Bontz’s Kerf Maker:
Kerf Maker.jpg
It is a lot easier to use than a piece of saw blade. Here it is being driven by a tack hammer. It also works fine with my tapping mallet. My plane adjusting mallet on the table is too light to drive the Kerf Maker effectively.
Also shown in this image is my “poor man’s” Moxon vise. The workpiece is backed by another piece and then they are clamped together. Here there is also a clamp across the piece to prevent splitting while completing the kerf. This isn’t always part of my procedure. Pine isn’t as splintery as many other woods. In this case my half pins are rather small so it seemed a cheap insurance policy.
The pins for the half blind dovetails are ready to be chopped:
Ready to Chop & Pop.jpg
The piece has a dog at one end and a clamp in the middle. Note the waste has also been cut in the middle. This helps when removing the waste after it has been chopped near the baseline.
This position didn’t work with a short chisel so the piece was moved to be more over the end vise.
Because of the image limit per post, this is a good place to break.
To Be Continued…
jtk
Last edited by Jim Koepke; 10-20-2017 at 4:57 PM.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)