Back on the w-i-p story, I seem to have taken something of a mishmash of photos, duplicating some jobs and missing others out. So, as anyone reading this will already know something about dovetails, I offer some selected photos to give an overall impression.
This part of the making was all about paring, assembly, dismantling, paring, assembly, paring, then stopping at what I hope was good enough.
One thing that bothered me as I tapped away yet again with my Thor hammer or an ordinary hammer and a block of wood, or gripped one end in the vice and levered at the other one, was that I knew I had read that dovetails should not be test assembled. In this joint, they must be, to get the mitres right. Even Custard doesn't get them to fit straight from the saw, first time. This is what Ernest Joyce wrote in his big book on Furniture Making:
When all the cutting has been finished the dovetails can be tried together, but they should never be knocked fully home until they are glued up, for it is axiomatic that a good dovetail only fits once.
Maybe that will do as an excuse if my joints turn out a little less than perfect? :wink:
So - paring the sockets. I settled on doing these horizontally, using a Moxon style vice to bring them up to a comfortable level where I could see what I was doing. The walnut is a bit weak - if I tried to chop too much, divots would pull out leaving nasty gaps,
so I used a fine old chisel, sharpened frequently and took little cuts.
To cut the mitres just needed a bit of freehand sawing outside the line. Not so bad on the bottom where there is a whole line to follow, a bit harder on the top of the moulding. Writing this up afterwards I realise I could have used a mitre box or block, but never mind.
This is a preliminary fitting:
There's clearly quite a bit of wood to be pared away, but at least the angles look right.
This was the setup for paring, which I really enjoyed doing:
I already knew that a standard technique for an ill-fitting mitre is to push the joint together as tight as it will go and run a fine saw down the joint. Fortunately, I managed to produce an ill-fitting mitre, so I was able to try this out:
What you can't get from that last photo is the sound of the saw being forced down into the wrong bit of the joint and my late realisation of that fact.
This shows the joint closed up a bit, plus the dark gash of evidence below.
The underneath is a bit tidier, but shows where I marked the mitre wrong earlier.
My next job was to prepare some little slivers of walnut. Top tip: don't tidy away any scraps until the whole project is safely finished.
It was also a good time to fix another blunder, where I had failed to position the groove for the bottom inside the dovetail. You can see here that there's a hole at the end of the groove where it falls too low.
The solution is to glue a scrap in place, wedged with other bits and pieces.
Then when the glue has dried
plane it down with the ideally sized tool for the job
so there is enough wood for a complete tail.
It's a good job I'm not trying to earn a living doing this!
The end result is a joint which closes up a lot better all round:
And here - tada! - is the whole thing, with eight ends all dry fitting together, if I choose my camera angle right.
Stay tuned for the next instalment - and find out whether I remember to make and fit a bottom before I glue the sides together!
This part of the making was all about paring, assembly, dismantling, paring, assembly, paring, then stopping at what I hope was good enough.
One thing that bothered me as I tapped away yet again with my Thor hammer or an ordinary hammer and a block of wood, or gripped one end in the vice and levered at the other one, was that I knew I had read that dovetails should not be test assembled. In this joint, they must be, to get the mitres right. Even Custard doesn't get them to fit straight from the saw, first time. This is what Ernest Joyce wrote in his big book on Furniture Making:
When all the cutting has been finished the dovetails can be tried together, but they should never be knocked fully home until they are glued up, for it is axiomatic that a good dovetail only fits once.
Maybe that will do as an excuse if my joints turn out a little less than perfect? :wink:
So - paring the sockets. I settled on doing these horizontally, using a Moxon style vice to bring them up to a comfortable level where I could see what I was doing. The walnut is a bit weak - if I tried to chop too much, divots would pull out leaving nasty gaps,
so I used a fine old chisel, sharpened frequently and took little cuts.
To cut the mitres just needed a bit of freehand sawing outside the line. Not so bad on the bottom where there is a whole line to follow, a bit harder on the top of the moulding. Writing this up afterwards I realise I could have used a mitre box or block, but never mind.
This is a preliminary fitting:
There's clearly quite a bit of wood to be pared away, but at least the angles look right.
This was the setup for paring, which I really enjoyed doing:
I already knew that a standard technique for an ill-fitting mitre is to push the joint together as tight as it will go and run a fine saw down the joint. Fortunately, I managed to produce an ill-fitting mitre, so I was able to try this out:
What you can't get from that last photo is the sound of the saw being forced down into the wrong bit of the joint and my late realisation of that fact.
This shows the joint closed up a bit, plus the dark gash of evidence below.
The underneath is a bit tidier, but shows where I marked the mitre wrong earlier.
My next job was to prepare some little slivers of walnut. Top tip: don't tidy away any scraps until the whole project is safely finished.
It was also a good time to fix another blunder, where I had failed to position the groove for the bottom inside the dovetail. You can see here that there's a hole at the end of the groove where it falls too low.
The solution is to glue a scrap in place, wedged with other bits and pieces.
Then when the glue has dried
plane it down with the ideally sized tool for the job
so there is enough wood for a complete tail.
It's a good job I'm not trying to earn a living doing this!
The end result is a joint which closes up a lot better all round:
And here - tada! - is the whole thing, with eight ends all dry fitting together, if I choose my camera angle right.
Stay tuned for the next instalment - and find out whether I remember to make and fit a bottom before I glue the sides together!
