Sandal Woods - Fine Woodworking & Cabinetry

A must-have for me, as I love to make boxes; this must be one of the coolest templates I have ever seen. I must get the finger joint template for my D4 jig, as it will really enhance the variety of the boxes I make - from small to large, square half-blind joints, and round-to-square finger joints! The three simple steps are:

1. Install the guide bushing and straight router bit
2. Route the pins
3. Route the sockets

This episode shows in detail the feature of the super-cool finger joint templates available for the Leigh dovetail jigs. These make the jigs THE most versatile accessory to make finger joints.

This episode shows the detailed instructions to cut half-blind dovetails on the Leigh D4R jig.On half-blind dovetail joints, only one side shows. The D4R has specific scales to create these in three steps:

1. Space the fingers to suit your taste - creating the joint design
2. Route the tails using a suitable router bit, and with the board arranged vertically
3. Route the pins with with the same router bit as was used to route the tails, and with the pin board clamped horizontally

Fine-tune the tail / pin fit by adjusting the bit height in the router, typically moving up just a few thousands of an inch. This will make the pins a little narrower, loosening the fit ever so slightly.

When I first started using my D4, this was the one adjustment that took me about an hour to master. The adjustment of the router bit is very small, to obtain the best fit!It IS truly this simple with the D4R!

I have used my old D4 for several years; by recording all the settings when I make a new box, I can return to the same setting(s) in just two minutes or less; in addition, I keep the old setup pieces I used when making the original adjustments for each router bit and wood thickness. I recommend you follow the same practice, and you will be quite happy with the results, no matter how much time passes between projects requiring half-blind dovetails.

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In this episode I will be trying something new - I think you will like it: I have been given permission by Leigh to post on the blog the videos they have produced for their entire product line, updated for 2008.

I will publish the entire set of videos over the next few weeks. These will thus become a full reference video library on the entire Leigh product line. So, let me know in the Comments section, or via e-mail, how well you like the series. Thanks!

This episode is the Introduction to the Leigh D4R 24-inch dovetail jig. The D4R is an update to the D4 I have in my shop, and that I use exclusively for many of my box projects - I LOVE to make boxes!

Some of you are already familiar with a little box I made with inlaid dovetails, and with what I called “bow ties” on the lid; the bow ties are inlaid end-on-end dovetails. At the request of one of the nice people at Leigh, photos of this little box found a home in the Leigh Inlaid Dovetail Gallery- the photos below reside at the Gallery:

As many of you know, Leigh Industries is one of my two new sponsors. What some people have not yet discovered is that Leigh has produced many videos on the use of their dovetails jigs; also, for the various templates used with these dovetail jigs; and for the FMT; for the router bit sets made for the jigs; for the vacuum systems used on the jigs; and for the superb User Guides they publish.

 

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Visitors to my shop are often interested in a how-to on the three-way miters that I used to make a “simple box” - the edging is walnut, set in 1/4-inch deep rabbets:

The procedure is quite straight forward once you make the first one - it just takes patience, as each piece of edging must be individually fitted to get the perfect-looking corner. It requires precise adjustment of the miter gauge to 45 degrees. The original procedure first appeared in Woodsmith Magazine.The accent edge pieces were 1/4″ square, plus about 0.030″, to ensure they would completely fill the routed rabbets on all edges of the box. After gluing in place, I used a flush cutting router bit, to bring the surfaces of the edging as close to the box surface as possible; the bit I used left the edging about 0.005″ proud, so I used a block plane to make it completely flush - this could also be done with careful sanding.The basic, first cut:

1. First is a regular miter, cut at 45°. I found this to be the hardest part of the entire process.
2. Rotate the edging piece so the bevel is facing up and cut a second 45° bevel; sneak up on the second miter, checking in between passes. The inside edge should align with the edge between the two bevel lines.

Fitting the accent edging to length:

3. Cut to length, repeating the steps above for the other corner. Sneak up on the final length for each piece. Mark each piece to the corresponding edge, to ensure good fit of all corners.
4. I found I had to sand off a little of the tip left under the corner below the bevels, to ensure best fit.
5. Tape in place to allow cutting adjacent edge pieces to proper length.
6. It is best to apply the edging to all the top and bottom faces, and then to all the corners.
7. Glue in place, and use tape to hold the edging securely until dry.
8. Flush all edge surfaces.
9. Use a roundover router bit to dress up the edges; but I encourage you to try your favorite way!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

—— Al

October 28, 2007

Keywords: inlaid dovetails D4 jig woodworking contrasting wood jointIn Part 2, I actually cut dovetails and pins on the sycamore (primary wood) and on the walnut (which I am using as accent wood in the inlays). Suggestion: Watch Part 1 first, and THEN this one will make a LOT more sense!

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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

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Duration: 14 mins., 22 sec.

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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

Some of you may have already seen the following in one of the woodworking forums. I wanted to document it here, however, to consolidate my work in this blog.

Summary:
This is just one case of asymmetric half-blind dovetails: This example is for inset drawers, in which the width of the front board is greater than the side and back boards.

My case of asymmetric dovetails:
Asymmetric dovetails in my example means simply that the width of the drawer front is a different width than the width of the sides and back. In addition, the top edge of the front is even with the drawer sides, and the bottom edge of the drawer front extends below the drawer box. In this case the bottom edge acts as a stop against the web frame when closing the drawer.

There are many types of asymmetric dovetails; this case is limited to drawer fronts, although it may apply to other cases.

This first photo is the existing drawer I was trying to reproduce. I needed four drawers for some old cabinets we bought at an auction:

As the photo above shows, the pin at the top of the drawer front in very thick; in fact, it is much thicker than current practice. Today, we aim for a narrow, half-pin at the top and bottom. THIS detail is what made the layout more difficult than I wanted to address.

In the case of a drop-front drawer, the drawer front’s bottom half-pin is much wider that the top half-pin. In this case, one would use the right-hand side of the D4 dovetail jig, to transfer the layout (Figure 13-16 of the D4 User Guide). I did not want to do this, because I wanted the procedure to be as simple as possible. How is THAT for lazy?

My solution:
I found it quicker to simply cut a spacer to the proper width:

I can cut a spacer much quicker than I can transfer the layout to the right-hand side of the D4. In my example, the difference in board widths was 0.910″, easy enough to cut on the table saw.

The right side of the front board and the side boards (tails) are all routed with the spacer in place, since the layout must remain identical:

For the left side of the drawer fronts I removed the spacer, to place the wider pins on the far left of the layout. This “open” shot probably illustrates this best - remember, this is the left-hand side of the drawer front:

The following is the finished half-blind dovetail board (these make the sides) in one drawer front, as it sat on the turntable in the finishing room. It looks like a good fit!

The following is a short list of important stuff I suggest you remember:

1. Always work with test boards, to ensure you are happy with the layout and you get the fit just right.

2. This will ensure you get the procedure correctly. To illustrate: By the end of the day, tired, I easily got confused and was NOT able to properly cut the pins for the drawer fronts. I called Leigh Industries, talked to Tech Support, sent photos via e-mail, and they set me straight (below):

3. ALWAYS mark the IN surfaces of the side boards (TAILS in my example for these half-blind joints); ALWAYS mark the OUT surfaces of the BACK boards (PINS in my example). Doing this ensures that, if you have to walk away from the project for any length of time, you will still know which surface must face out.

4. AND always ensure that the marked surfaces face OUT in the jig. This way you always make sure that you are cutting from the the proper side of the boards, which is CRITICAL when cutting dovetails.

I hope this helps you some day . Enjoy!

Al

The Sister, also going to the Silent Auction

And now, the little box has a “sister”, also going to the silent auction. I have been making this one along with the original box with the walnut inlays - I just had not mentioned it, waiting to see how things developed. I share with you both, still unfinished; I just have to remove some glue on the one on the left, sand its bottom, and glue it to the base:

For the sister box I debated what to do about the lid. I have always used hinges to attach the lids, but I wanted to try something different with this box. In the end I decided to hand-sculpt the lid pull, using carving tools and refining the shape with some riffler files:

I spent part of the afternoon today doing a little sanding, and applying the first coat of finish. I like the look of Waterlox on quarter-sawn sycamore, so this is what I used today. After applying the initial coat of Waterlox Original using a wadded cotton rag, the boxes look as follows as they dry on the workbench:

First, the box with inlaid dovetails:

Notice how the Waterlox just POPS the walnut inlays against the sycamore. And the QS sycamore is starting to show its beauty with the first, thin coating.The sister shows off its beautiful grain too:

I am now close to getting done! I hope to have the finished, finished boxes to share by Saturday, if all goes well.

Oh - one more thing.

As I left the shop, feeling good about the progress on these two little boxes, I looked to my left and saw the following, and it made a good day into a perfect day:

Al

Another box for a silent auction at a local churchIf you have been following this blog, you already know that Sandy made a box on the band saw. She will donate her box to a local church, which will hold a silent auction in a few weeks. Of course, the box will go to the highest bidder.Now it is my turn - how can I NOT donate something for this local auction? No way. I HAD to also make something! Doing this makes me feel good, as all donations will go to a worthwhile charity cause. The short version of the story: I made this little box from one board, using quarter sawn sycamore and inlaid walnut dovetails. The base is also walnut. The board I selected had some truly nice grain; I decided to resaw a 1/4-inch thick piece to use as a captured bottom for the box, and use some with similar grain for the lid. The finish will be Waterlox - I will post an update when the finish has been applied, and the wonderful quarter sawn grain is much more obvious. This is the box as it stands today, sitting on the workbench; in other words, a work-in-progress (WIP). The dimensions are: 3 inches tall, 5 inches deep, 8 inches wide; the sides are just under 1/2-inch thick: Background - inlaid dovetails and bow ties: On a daily basis I frequent various woodworking forums, and learn a lot from them. I also try to contribute in whatever way I can. I use the Leigh D4 dovetail jig to make boxes with dovetail joinery. I love making boxes, and especially boxes with dovetails. The D4 comes with a terrific User Guide; and Technical Bulletins supplement and augment the information in the User Guide. The Leigh procedure to make inlaid dovetails and end-on-end dovetails can be found at their Customer Support page. In preparation for a much larger project, one day I was playing with a prototype with inlaid dovetails, and also with end-on-end dovetails. I wanted to get comfortable with the technique. Using walnut as the inlay, I developed what I came to call “bow ties”, as can be seen on the lid of this prototype box: I shared these photos in various forums , as I was excited with the results. Eventually, my wife and I decided to give this little box as a Christmas present to my aunt. As luck would have it, a person at Leigh Industries read my post at a major woodworking forum, and contacted me to request permission to post the photos at their Inlaid Dovetails Photo Gallery . At this link you can view the rest of the photo Gallery, and also the larger versions of these photos. Some time later, at another forum, I inquired whether some members might be interested in a tutorial on HOW to make the inlaid dovetails, and especially the end-on-dovetails. The answer was a resounding YES, there was quite a bit of interest. I will develop the photo tutorial in the near future, using the Leigh D4 dovetail jig. Please, leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Al

I admit it: I am fascinated by boxes. And boxes made on the band saw are irresistible. Every box made on the band saw is different - different character, different bark pattern, different touch.

I love the raw beauty of a nice band saw box. I can stare at them, hold them, play with them, move the drawers in and out. I am drawn to them time and again, fascinated by their simplicity of construction, and the demanding sanding and attention to fine detail required to get them ready to apply some kind of protective coating.

My wife Sandy made the following box using the band saw; it is an oak burl jewelry box. She will be demonstrating how to make these boxes at a meeting of the our woodworking Guild next week.

The box, as you first see it:

And now you find out that this piece of burl wood has drawers:

But this box is also pretty special, for she is donating it to a local church, to be sold to the highest bidder in a silent auction.

The oak burl used to make this box was given to Sandy by one of our fellow woodworkers. Originally destined for the lathe, I am glad the burl became a box instead.

If you wish to get additional information on making boxes using a band saw, please leave a message and one of us will get back to you.

Thanks for looking!

Al