Replies

1. 
   Mike_King | Mar 27, 2000 08:33pm | #1

   *
   Wow, Malcolm! You must have stumped everybody with your question!
   Although I'm not much for cutting dovetails, I'm big on clipping corners in a design, so I'll give this a try:

   My thoughts are centred around hand-cutting these, since there's no machine short of CNC routers with angle jigs that will machine-cut them. (Except maybe a very precise angled-tenon jig?)

   In thinking this one out, I realized the toughest part will be to set up your marking guide on a 45 deg. plane. You can't use your standard guages, but you can use the same habits for layout. The big thing is all your cuts must finish at a 45 to the board, so you may need an angled depth stop arrangement for the dovetail saw. If you finish parallel to your 90 deg edge now, then you'd need to finish cuts parallel to the 45 deg edge with these.

   The 45 deg slope of your pin and tail ends will affect your dovetail angle and it might be best to use crown moulding setting tables to get your dovetail angles figured out.

   So I hope this helps- and if I'm out to lunch, maybe you'd consider me brave if nothing else?;-)

   If you really wanna challenge yourself, try figuring out compound-angle dovetails..

1. 
   malcolm_granberry | Apr 07, 2000 04:13am | #2

   *mike king, thanks for your thoughts. I guess I will try to work out a schema for dovetails at 45 degrees. "canted" or compound miter dovetail joints are described well in a book-"woodwork joints" by charles h. hayward (Sterling Publishing Co. 1979) and briefly described in Joyce's book. Thanks Malcolm

1. 
   CStanford_ | Apr 14, 2000 05:27pm | #3

   *Cripes, make the drawers shorter or the cabinet a little deeper to avoid having to clip the drawers on one corner (or move the drawers slightly to center). I've built more than one freestanding corner cupboard, looked at lots of plans for same, and have never seen one that had to have a drawer cut in the manner that you described.I mean, how many inches are you clipping off the corner? Less than two? Surely a slight change in design could accomodate that and make things a bit easier.Just trying to be helpful, but I think you are making things too hard on yourself.I'm practically positive that I'll get blasted for this advice......

1. 
   Bob_Berner | Apr 15, 2000 05:28pm | #4

   *CStanford, I am not here to blast you. You make a sound suggestion for solving the problem. But the way you start your post "Cripes, make the drawers..." does not carry a positive tone. This medium is not condusive to to subtleties of inflection or body language. If you are going to get blasted it is for how you answered the question rather than the answer you provided. Maybe Malcom has a valid reason for doing this, perhaps he will let us know. Bob

1. 
   CStanford_ | Apr 15, 2000 07:30pm | #5

   *Good point, Bob. I guess I was harkening back to the almost countless times I was standing over a design problem and my wife walked by and made an off-hand suggestion that was a dead on solution to my problem. Sometimes we woodworkers get caught up in the minutia and need someone to shake us and wake us up.I'm sure that I have probably oversimplified the gentleman's dilemma with his design.