You will notice that I use a climb cutting technique as I start each cut, even when cutting the tails. But climb-cutting will be much more important when I cut the pins, as there is a LOT more waste to remove in the tails boards! My only advice is to take it easy and make only VERY light cuts when you make the climb cuts – if you don’t, the router WILL let you know you are taking too much material in one pass.Let me know with your comments how you like this tutorial. And remember: Part 3 will show the actual cutting of the boards to final inlay thickness.Enjoy!—— Al
Archives for October 2007
Inlaid dovetails – Tutorial, Part 1, The Basics (The Pilot, too!)
Two hard disk drives later, I was finally able to continue editing this video. What a week this has been with the laptop! The original, 5-year old, 250-GB external disk drive crashed, the replacement I bought lasted exactly 22 hours, but the store replaced it on the spot. I am back up and running, although the video editor has been a little cranky.
Now, the fun stuff:
This is Part 1 of making inlaid dovetails – it covers The Basics. I take you to the point where I just start cutting the dovetails on the tails boards. But it IS important basics, as it shows in detail HOW to open the fingers on the jig, to allow for the thickness of the inlay. Total length: 14 minutes, 22 seconds.
I winged it through the entire shoot with no script, no nothing, and it shows! If it looks a little rough, well…. It IS rough. But I did get through it, and hopefully this tutorial will help someone at some point.
Part 2 is uploading to Blip.tv as I post this, so it should be available later tonight. In Part 2 I will actually cut tails and pins, following all the introductory stuff in Part 1. And Part 3 (later this week???) will show me cutting the pin sockets in the walnut inlays, and assembling the box shell.
You can download the Leigh procedure to create inlaid dovetails at the Leigh Support Page. It is the second Technical Bulletin.
Let me know what you think, and especially leave me feedback so that I can take this blog in the direction that is of interest to many of you. Thanks for watching!
—— Al
This is NW Missouri in the Fall – it is NOT New England, Dorothy!
Well, the Love of My Life (LOML) and I rested from woodworking a little bit this past weekend. We were chasing the gorgeous Fall colors – and we found some! You will see them, below. Unlike the Eastern part of the State, in NW Missouri we have mostly rolling hills. You will find rolling hill after rolling hill, for as far as the eye can see; and some hills are much taller than others. We don’t have any mountains in Missouri, though.
We took a short ride on Sunday morning, making a complete circle from St Joseph to Maryville, to Conception Abby, Stanberry, King City, Union Star, and back home. The entire trip was around 100 miles, and about three hours, counting the time to get out of the truck and bracket several shots of the same scene, trying to get the best colors. These maps are courtesy of MapQuest on the Internet.
First, the overall map of Missouri:
This was our route on Sunday:
We headed North from St Joseph, toward Maryville, about 30 miles North of us. Driving along we came up on this stretch of road – the people in this home must have a gorgeous view:
And just outside Maryville, this nice view:
East and then South we arrived in the town of Conception, home of Conception Abbey. I took the following photos on the grounds of the Abbey:
1. On arrival, this is the scene that greets you – the Abbey itself:
2. Gorgeous colors help to frame the twin towers:
3. Across the street was this tree, as if on fire:
4. Just as we were leaving we saw these trees, at the entrance to the cemetery:
Now we are on our way to Stanberry – a corn field shortly after the harvest (not many trees here…):
Just after we arrived in Stanberry we saw this gorgeous sight:
King City has become the home of an experimental wind turbine farm – the wind blows most of the time:
And after making the turn toward home, just past King City:
I hope you enjoyed this tour as much I enjoyed sharing it with you. Thanks for looking!
Oh – please leave me a comment to let me know if you enjoyed this journey.
—— Al