While this is pretty ho-hum for most readers of this magazine…
It was not for me. 

After years and years of only working with machines, I’m fully in love with hand tool woodworking; and am working really hard on cutting decent dovetails by hand. 

I struggled with starting the cut on the pin board for a long time. 
Then i read up on Rob Cosman’s method of offsetting the tail board before transferring them onto the pin board. And that solved my problem… or it WOULD have, if i could’ve gotten it to work. 

Cosman, of course, sells a trinket to help you with this. But i think that all of the guides, doodads and doohickeys being sold to help you cut dovetails are not a good idea. 

So i built a jig to help transfer the tails onto the pin board. And the beauty of it is that it makes offsetting the tail board a snap. Simply flush both the pin and tail boards up with the fence. Insert your saw in between the fence and the tail board. Mark the left sides of your tails. 

Remove your pieces, flip the jig upside down, and repeat. Now the fence is on your right, so you’ll mark the right side of your tails onto the pin board. 

Anyway, that was what really got me to finally start cutting gap free, tight fitting tails. 

(Don’t worry, i still find plenty of other ways to screw them up…)

Launch Gallery