I’ve often wondered if my 12″ dovetail jig could be adapted for something wider than 12″. I’m thinking of a deep box or something like that.
Is there someway that I could make a board wider than 12″ with dovetails? Would gluing two separate wide boards with dovetails together be feasible or is too difficult? Any suggestions?
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You can adapt your narrow dovetail jig to wider boards if you’re very careful with your indexing. Stop the cut on a full tail socket and then move the entire jig over to finish up the routing. You’ll
have to do the same for the pin cuts. But it’s tricky stuff and you can’t be off by more than a hair. If you’re using a half blind jig, I’d avoid doing anything wider than what the jig is set up for. The
jigs where you cut each side of the joint separately will be easier to move over.
But the simpler solutions are to buy a wider jig or to cut them by hand. Cutting by hand will allow you to space out the tails and pins as you need. You can put more tails out near the corners of the board where a board has a greater tendency to cup, and fewer then in the middle. Saw by hand or on the bandsaw. Good luck.
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