Hi,
What wood is the best choice for practicing dovetails?
Thanks,
Angel
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Replies
I use pine, it's cheap and plentiful.
My two cents:
Scraps of the wood you hope to get good at making dovetails in. Seriously.
Making dovetails in pine is not the same as making them in hard maple, for example. Softer woods compress more, and are, therefore much more forgiving of slight imperfections. Therefore, to get the small (but crucial) points right, you need to work with the wood you are actually going to use eventually, or at least something close to it in terms of desity and grain structure.
Angel,
I started with birch since it was inexpensive and hard as a rock. With a hard wood, you learn to cut very accurately, because there is a fine line between a joint that fits well and one that splits apart when driven together. Soft woods on the other hand, can compress and give a "false" reading on where you are at.
Whatever wood you use, don't judge your results until you have glued them together and plane them flush; even well fitted dovetails look a little crude until they are glued and flushed up.
Rob Millard
http://www.americanfederalperiod.com
I also would practice with the type of wood that you plan on using for your project.
I'll go against the grain here a bit. I prefer poplar or pine for DT practice. My reasons:
The best test to tell if you've properly sharpened your chisels is to cut across the grain in soft wood. If you can chisel across the grain without tear-out, your tool is sharp enough. If you can sharpen well enough to make nice cuts in poplar or pine, you will have no problems in harder wood.
Softer wood better helps teach how to properly and accurately start a saw cut. If you use too much pressure, the soft wood develops "teeth" that stop the saw. You learn a lighter touch with soft wood.
Soft wood makes the chiseling process go faster, but you don't have to be any less accurate. Less wasted time.
It's cheaper.
If you believe Frank Klaus, drawer boxes should be made of pine anyway, so much of your DT work will be in pine.
"Practice on the wood you intend to use" makes no sense to me, since I want my students to learn to cut DTs, not DTs in cherry, or DTs in oak. If you can cut a DT, you can cut a DT in any kind of wood, hard or soft.
All that said, perhaps the best practice for learning to cut DTs is not to cut DTs at all, but to simply learn to saw accurately to a line. When I'm teaching DTs, I have my students first make a LOT of 1" deep cuts straight into any scrap of wood and perpendicular (by eye - no marks yet) to the surface. Once they've made a few, I have them put a square to the cuts to see how square they are. Make adjustments to correct any errors and have another go. Repeat. After they get pretty good at cutting straight and square, I have them transfer these skills to cutting to a line, cutting to an angled line, then splitting a line. Once they've spent a couple of hours at this, DTs are no problem -- just another set of lines. "Wax on. Wax off" LOL!
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
Everything fits, until you put glue on it.
So, Mike, you don't find that the required accuracy goes up as the hardness of the wood does?
As for cheaper, I guess I assumed we all have barrels of offcuts, but I suppose some may not.
S,
Although Mike's point - about learning to saw first then making particular sawcuts for joints - is a good one I agree with you that practicing in the type of timber to be used for furniture is a necessary first step to cutting good joints. It isn't just different going from softwood to hardwood. Even amongst these two categories there are variations between different woods that affect how they cut and how the joints mate.
Oak can be be more difficult to saw and pare accurately than cherry, for instance, because of the very different nature of the wood fibres. Oak cab be stringy and keen to split or flake off bits, whilst the grain can "grab" the saw and wonk a cut; cherry behaves itself and will even squash a bit like a softwood (but not much) if undercut.
Old pitch pine is much harder (like a hardwood in fact) and in need of accuracy of cut than are the various soft pines. The PP also has great variation of hardness between early and late parts of the annual rings, which can sometimes cause a sawcut to be grabbed and sent off-line.
Some exotics, such as ebony, are very brittle, making the typical tiny cuts being done for a box or some other small jointed item particularly awkward. However, I ain't got enough of that to practice with! :-)
Lataxe
People are thinking of different things when they see the word "practice." To some people, it's learning how to cut dovetails from scratch, assuming little or no experience. To others, it's learning how to adjust your technique to successfully cut joints in materials having varying characteristics.
-Steve
To me practice means dry runs of actions in preparation and hope for better results when performing the action when it counts. To put it in Lataxe's terms, if I wanted to practice my climbing for the Tour de Knots, I wouldn't go to the velodrome. The velodrome might indeed help my cycling in some ways, but there ain't nothing like the real thing, baby (to coin a phrase). Train like you play and play like you train!
I don't think that's the only, or even the best, approach. Any moderately complex activity consists of a large number of sub-activities, any one of which can be the "weakest link" when it comes to successfully completing the activity. Performing the entire activity is often not the best way to improve those weak links. For that, there are études (to borrow a term from music). Études allow you to focus in on the one part that's giving you trouble. They're not a substitute for performing the entire piece, of course, but they can be very helpful in getting you through the rough spots.
-Steve
I guess I don't see the need to break dovetailing down into so many sub parts that it becomes a veritable zeno's paradox where a newbie can't ever get there. Then again, I am arguing that it's the very subtle points that can trip you up if you are not attuned to them. Have you seen my goofy video (mostly a tongue and cheek use of sound effects I found on my Mac) I linked on the "Jump the Shark" thread. I'm cutting maple there. If I were working with poplar or walnut or cherry, it wouldn't look all that different, but in real time (the video is highly edited at 90 seconds), I would know where the pitfalls were in each species (and how tolerant they are/are not of imperfections). Really that's all I'm saying. But hey, we all find our own way. Practice in pine may be just the ticket for everyone but me, Rob, and Dave.
Cheers!
"People are thinking of different things when they see the word "practice." To some people, it's learning how to cut dovetails from scratch, assuming little or no experience. To others, it's learning how to adjust your technique to successfully cut joints in materials having varying characteristics."
True enough. I was assuming the former was the OP's intent.Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PAEverything fits, until you put glue on it.
>Hardness up accuracy up<Yep ! Fairly often a person will make a cabinet to put drawers into. The sides will be of that same wood not pine squished into the harder wood.I marvel at Mr Frank Klausz's DVD where he cuts the pins and tails and just puts them together without a test.However.To be completely impressed i want to see him do this for a maple cabinet side and top.Some have said to me " He probably could ". They are probably right but I bet he would need to concentrate a bit more : )rocGive me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. Abraham Lincoln ( 54° shaves )
"To be completely impressed i want to see him do this for a maple cabinet side and top."
I've been making hand-cut DTs for years. But seeing Frank Klauz' video on drawers made me completely rethink my processes, cast off my old ways and follow the master. ;-)
Now, I regularly make DTs ala FK, tho' I typically use oak or maple for the drawer sides/back, instead of pine which FK prefers. Various hardwoods for the cabs. I use no marking knife (just a pencil), cut the pins first by eye, usually no fancy DT guages (just my aging eyeballs), and sometimes I don't even use a marking guage, substituting using the mating drawer part itself to draw the line -- but they fit just fine with minimal fiddling. (And I kinda like the slightly uniform DTs that say "handmade".) FK says he can make a drawer in 45 minutes. I'm not that fast, but not too far off.
FWIW, I have never found that the wood the cab sides/top is made from to have any effect on how the DTs fit.
I also disagree with those who think you need to be more accurate with hardwood than softwood. If that's the case, I'm thinking' your softwood DTs don't fit properly and you're forcing them. After all, if you make them with a router, do you have to be more accurate with hardwood? I can't see how, since the jig doesn't care what wood is under the bit -- it's right and it fits, or it isn't and it doesn't.Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PAEverything fits, until you put glue on it.
"I've been making hand-cut DTs for years. But seeing Frank Klauz' video on drawers made me completely rethink my processes, cast off my old ways and follow the master. ;-)"+1Just like honing freehand; it may take a little practice, but once you've "got it", it makes life so much easier!
"you don't find that the required accuracy goes up as the hardness of the wood does? "
Not really. A cut to the line is a cut to the line in my book, no matter what the substrate is. Just because you can force a piece of pine to fit by deforming it doesn't mean you cut it properly. Hard or soft, the joint should tap home just snugly. Once you have learned to saw properly, it matters little what type wood is under the saw -- it just goes faster or slower, depending. I don't find it any more technically difficult to cut to a line on oak than I do on pine. Pine cuts faster, but you still have to hold & move the saw the same. The trick is to develop the stance and grip that allows you to move the saw in a straight line consistently.
Of course, YMMV. Diffren' strokes, yada yada.
Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PAEverything fits, until you put glue on it.
What ever is in the scrap barrel?
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Any wood you have at hand!
Don,
The author of "The complete dovetail" suggests using mahogany...about 5"x18"; Make a set, cut them off and start all over. The only thing I'll add is to prepare your wood well, (flat and square)that helps ensure the problems are from technique and not wood. Don't forget to plane them flush to examine the finished product.
Don (Angel?),
It's not the joint itself that changes is it? It's the process that needs the practice, right? Use any wood. Are you doing these hand cut or machine made?
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 5/9/2009 11:46 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
Edited 5/9/2009 11:58 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
"Hi,
What wood is the best choice for practicing dovetails?"
Don - That depends. If you're entirely new to hand-cut dovetails, then it's a mistake to choose whatever wood you have in the scrap barrel, because some species are considerably more difficult to saw/chisel/pare to get a good fit on dovetails than others. Several have noted some of these on this thread - oak, hard pine ("southern yellow" in the States), cypress, maple, birch and even cherry and walnut are not good first choices. They are either very hard (which makes learning to pare to the baseline difficult), splintery (oak - which cause a great deal of frustration in chipping out corners), or have huge contrasts in hardness between early/latewood (hard pine - which makes cleanly paring and sawing difficult).
Ian Kirby's recommendation is the best one if you're just learning this - honduran mahogany. While not a cheap wood, you don't need much to practice with - a single 4" wide, 4' long piece will last you for at least 10 joints if you choose a secondary wood like eastern white pine or poplar for the mating piece. Even at $10 a b.f., that comes out to $13, which is a whole lot cheaper than even one of the tools you need to make DT joints.
I do suggest that you practice by joining a primary cabinet wood to a softer secondary wood. This is generally considered correct design in drawer construction, and it will be a fairly rare instance that you'll be joining two primary hard cabinet woods together (unless you're primarily interested in making dovetailed cases for jewelry boxes and humidors).
Just one point which may affect your choice. First, do not waste time trying to cut fine pins in soft or coarse grain woods. Personal satisfaction comes in cutting well-fitting joints in quarter sawn oak, beech or the like, where the slope is one in six and the grain cuts cleanly. Then try on crumbly soft woods and suffer the frustration of seeing how your best efforts are not matched by good joints.
It seems daft, but using good wood for practise encourages good practice, yet using any old stuff may put you off from enjoying the work.
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