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More about an old drawer, and one request

January 10, 2010 By

You will remember this old drawer I found in an old chest, in the Old Woodshed store in Intercourse, Pennsylvania:

In that earlier article I requested feedback, as I did not know what this joint is called. I received excellent feedback from several readers (I included links in the earlier article).  Today I received an e-mail from another Al, who read that article, and wrote:

Those pin & crescent half moon joints are actually called Knapp joints.  Charles Knapp of Waterloo Wisconsin patented the machine in 1867 and then sold it to a group of investors that formed a company called the Knapp Dovetail Company of Northampton Mass. The company sold machines to furniture manufacturers for a little over 20 years. The machines were widely used from about 1870 to 1900 until the first machine that cut more traditional looking dovetails came out. I’ve been looking for info on furniture built with Knapp joints because I have a gorgeous solid maple dresser that has them.  However a previous owner replaced all the pulls with really cheap Chippendale style reproductions … I’d like to get back to original looking pulls.  And, I’ve built a pair of nightstands that match the dresser (minus the Knapp Joints – I used traditional dovetails) and need pulls for my drawers.

I regret to say that I did not take any photos of the pulls. However, if you read this, and can provide a good source for the pulls, please let us know – Al needs pulls for his drawers. Thanks!

And my thanks to Al for writing with additional information!

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— Al Navas

Filed Under: Blog, Conference, Dovetails, Joinery, Valley Forge, Woodworking in America Tagged With: , , ,

Tutorial: hand-cut half-blind dovetails

December 21, 2009 By

Download this video in Quicktime format
(In Windows,  Right-click | Save Link As…)
Duration: 21:41 minutes

One of the readers of the blog recently posted the following Comment to the earlier article on More great drawers:

Could you add ‘Cutting Pins by Hand for Half-Blind Dovetails’ to the list of topics to cover? I fully get how to cut pins and tails for through dovetails, but half-blind pins I can’t seem to wrap my mind around. Is it all chisel work? Is there a sawing technique I don’t know of to cut 80% through the thickness of a board?

Torch, this article and video are my response to your request – perfect timing!

Although today it is considered the hallmark of a woodworking craftsman, the dovetail was not always held in such high esteem. In fact, dovetails used to be buried behind trim, as they were strictly a utilitarian joint; but they were used for their holding strength. Today we make dovetails by hand and with dovetail jigs, to get beautiful results; and they are beautiful!

In this episode I show in detail how to cut one half-blind dovetail on a narrow board. Although I managed to damage the fit on the first attempt, I recovered to shoot the chopping of the pins for this episode in its entirety. In the video I show in high speed the details of chopping the waste, from start to finish:

  1. Very light chiseling at the baseline, to ensure that it stays nice and clean.
  2. Once the baseline is established, more aggressive chopping can take place.
  3. But care must be taken at the half-pins, to prevent splitting of the wood; typically, a narrower chisel, and lighter chisel action are required, or the board will split.
  4. Slight undercutting at the baseline, about 1° to 2°, will result in better and easier fit of the tails in their sockets.
  5. However, too much undercutting will result in a weak joint – as a result, avoid too much undercutting. Practice, practice…
  6. Chop the bulk of the waste with the board supported by the workbench; then place the work piece in the vise, to finish with light paring cuts.
  7. Cut a very small chamfer on the back of the dovetails, to easy entry into their respective sockets in the pins board.

Gary Rogowski is a great advocate of the 5-minute dovetail, a practice session to get ready for the real job of cutting the joinery on a real project. And although the exercise is typically for through dovetails, I believe it applies just as well to half-blind dovetails. In fact, I always do a similar warm-up when I use the Leigh dovetail jig – I never start cutting dovetails cold, regardless the method. Click on this link to see the Inlaid Dovetails Tutorial videos I posted on the blog in March 2008, using the Leigh D4 dovetail jig.

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Filed Under: Blog, Dovetails, Education, Joinery, Tutorial, Video Tagged With: , , , , ,

More great drawers

December 18, 2009 By

Glenn, one of the readers of my blog, saw the following photo of the first great drawer I made for the stand-up desk. The joinery on the back of the drawer is shown, with no glue, and the surfaces not yet planed even – in other words, pretty much as the the dovetails came off the saw:

Glenn wrote me a short note, asking how I am able to get the shoulder on the half-pin sockets as nice and square as  I showed in the photo above. As I worked on the drawers yesterday and today, I documented how I do it. My old way of doing was fashioned after the technique of Frank Klausz – simply line up the saw with the baseline marked on the edge of the shoulder, and cut it off. Most of the time it works just fine, but sometimes I miss and cut a little beyond the line – and that creates a gap I dislike very much. My fault, of course. If you are not familiar with the pins-first technique to hand-cut dovetails, I suggest you view the three videos of Frank Klausz I shot during the Woodworking in America conference in Berea, KY, in November 2008.

I much prefer the new way I do the cutoffs these days; I wish I could tell you where I learned to do it this way, but I cannot remember. I start by carefully and lightly chiseling the baseline on the edge of the board; then I cut off a very small and shallow sliver – this leaves a nice channel for the dovetail saw, and a nice reference edge on which I can rest the saw to start the cut:

drawer-side-shoulder-2

I then carefully place the saw in the channel, and saw off the half-pin to create the half-pin socket for the pins board (practice, practice, practice, to learn to saw really close to the scribed base line):

drawer-side-shoulder

The photo above shows my preference to cut pins first; once the pins boards are done, I mark the dovetails from the pins. Note: This applies only to the through dovetails on the back of the drawers.

I chisel out the waste on the remaining pin sockets by carefully removing very thin slivers at the baseline, as in the following photo:

drawer.chop-pins

Today’s work: the through dovetail joinery on the drawer backs, for three additional drawers – two drawer backs fit very well right off the saw, and one required a little paring work:

drawers

Now I can start on the joinery to the drawer fronts. These will require half-blind dovetails, similar to the first drawer I made:

Once all the drawer joinery is done, I can start machining the drawer slips for the hardwood bottom panels. I will cover in detail the making and fitting of the drawer slips in another article.

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Filed Under: Blog, Dovetails, Joinery Tagged With: , ,

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