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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