Cutting our tails.

With much anticipation the ladies started dovetailing their plinths on Sunday afternoon.

I essentially use Alan Peters' method of laying out and cutting dovetails. I do it tails first. I know many people prefer pins first but I think the tails first vs pins first argument is silly. Do it the way you are most comfortable which is probably the way you first learned to cut them. Save the emotional energy for something that actually matters.

We start by marking the width of the pin board around the ends of the tail boards by setting a marking gauge to the width of pin board and running it completely around the ends of the tail boards. We continue by determining the size of the half-pins on the ends. I seem to tend toward 1/4" varying larger or smaller with the size of the board. I set one divider to the size of the half-pin and set it aside to mark all of my boards at once.

Next I determine the number of tails I want, stepping that off on the end of the first board until I have set the opening on the second divider to the size of one tail plus one pin. Then I mark all of the tail cuts using an extra fine point pen and bevel gauge. Do not use gel ink, it soaks into the wood ruining the piece (guess how I know that little fact...). I mark the angle by running the pen up from the mark we scribed with the marking gauge and straight across the end of the board.

Since the girls have been practicing sawing to a line and are now quite good at it, the tail board is positioned plumb in the vice. Sawing straight across the top and down at the marked angle, they carefully stopped right at the scribed line.

Most of the waste is removed with a fret saw and then cleaned up with a chisel.

I was impressed with both ladies sawing abilities. If you look back at where we started compared to today you would not guess that both have only a few sessions experience. When it comes to handling a chisel neither is taking a back seat to anyone.

As always happens we ran out of time before we ran out of enthusiasm. Next week we'll layout and cut the pins and plow the grooves and dados for the carcase rails. Then we will assemble the plinths.

Bill