Dovetail Chisels

[custard]

I've been finishing of some drawers off to get a job out before Christmas, occurred to me there's a simple dovetail chisel trick I sometimes use that others might find useful.

You'll often find you have very limited access between the tails, even more so if you use needle point or London pattern dovetails. There's often a little section of timber right in the inside corner that you didn't get to with your initial sawing. It's pretty much impossible to reach down from the top with a chisel,

There's usually a way, even with chisels that have thick lands, to come in from the sides to remove this waste. But it's often a faff, and if you're not careful you risk bruising your work with the lands or the top corner of the chisel. One alternative is to take a card scraper and grind/hone an edge on one of the short sides.

Using this you can get into any dovetail, even London pattern. By holding the card scraper tight against the inner flat of a tail you can, with a gentle tap, neatly separate the fibres. A bit of chisel work from the side will then deliver a really crisp and true inside corner.

Costs pretty much nothing and it's always worked for me. If you're doing fiddly dovetail work like this it's sometimes a useful trick to have in your back pocket,

 

[Newbie_Neil]

Custard that is such a simple idea, thank you so much for sharing.

Neil

 

[memzey]

Thanks for sharing this Custard. Great little tip. I sometimes use a knife to sever those fibres but I have to be very careful and it doesn’t feel as controlled as I’d like it to be. Will try this next time.

 

[MikeG.]

Nice trick. I always chisel mine out flat on the bench, not in the vice, and I clean that corner out approaching from the face (rather than the end) of the board with a 1/4" bevel edged chisel. Go just past half-way, then flip it over and repeat.

 

[dzj]

Cool trick, thanks for sharing.
Some folks use also a card scraper (no bevel on edge) to deepen the kerf when cutting
pins on half bind DTs.

 

[kevinlightfoot]

Great tip Custard,I have always used Mike G s method but as you say the method you describe would have made life much simpler on occasion,thanks again and Merry Christmas.

 

[Mr T]

Good tip Custard. What vice is that shown in the pics? I don't recognise the make.

Chris

 

[woodbrains]

Good tip Custard. What vice is that shown in the pics? I don't recognise the make.

Chris

Hello,

Emmert pattern makers vice? I fitted one of these for a friend in Vermont once. Useful things, but a bit spendy.

I ground a chisel very thin to do the same as the scraper trick above, and also a chisel into a sharp cornered triangle section for getting into all the books an crannies without bruising the sides. This was when my chisels didn't have such fine lands as my Ashley Iles do now. The thin one still gets used though. I should have thought of using a scraper!

Mike.

 

[custard]

Mike's right, it's an Emmert style vice (not an original unfortunately, just a copy). They're terrific for things like chairmaking, where you're trying to hold tapered or curved components at all sorts of odd angles. But they're pretty much rubbish for dovetailing because there's a big void behind the jaws, so it's tricky to line up a bench plane as a support for the tail board during the transfer...yes, I know, another reason to cut pins first!