Several readers requested a video on how I remove dovetail pin waste with a drill press. Today I was making more dovetails for my next campaign chest and shot this short video. Enjoy! Or hate!
Read the post and see the video here.
— Christopher Schwarz
While there have been too many words written about dovetails, there has been far too little written about using wood compression in the joint.
The only time I hear it discussed is on the woodworking show circuit, when a demonstrator is dovetailing a purpleheart board to accept a white pine one. The demonstrator has a wide margin of error when he assembles the joint because of what Glen D. Huey calls “the mash factor.” You can compress pine – a lot – when it is dovetailed into a stout wood.
In my shop, I use wood compression when cutting dovetails to keep things tight without splitting. Here’s how.
After I cut the first half of the joint I show it to the other half and use a knife to mark the shape of what I want to remove. Then I saw out the joint, but I stand off a tiny wee little itsy bit from the knife line.
How far I stand off depends on the wood. With soft woods, such as white pine, it might be 10 thou or so – I’m just guessing at the measurement. With hard woods, such as cherry or walnut, it’s less. With oak or teak or maple it’s almost nothing. I leave the knife line and the tiniest sliver possible. But I still leave something. Everything compresses.
— Christopher Schwarz
For me, the hardest part of making half-blind dovetails isn’t the sawing. It’s chiseling out the waste between the pins. So when I have a crapload of half-blind dovetails to make, I use my drill press and a Forstner bit to bore out the bulk. Then I finish up with a regular bench chisel.
I’m in the midst of a sea of half-blind and full-blind dovetails for my latest campaign chest. All together, I have 16 half-blind corners, two full-blind corners and 10 through-dovetail corners to make. In my book, that’s a crapload.
I set my drill press so that it bores just shy of my baselines – I don’t trust its depth stop. (The stop has bent many times; I should replace it.) So there’s still some chopping and paring I need to do with each joint.
With any luck, I should have the lower carcase of this chest glued up this afternoon. And thanks to my drill press, I’ll have saved several hours I can devote to editing some upcoming books. That’s also removing waste, but it’s a process that my drill press can’t help with.
— Christopher Schwarz
But what of this new style that has been struggling through to beauty in these post-war years? One sees the impressionistic school of pre-war days. One sees a war-racked England, struggling to get away from its own nerves – the nerves that it inherited form the past. The race feels intensely that things must change.
There are creations like flashes of lightning, or the stars seen by one dazed by a blow; jazz designs in upholstery, sideboards with the oddest shapes stuck on their ends, things designed to meet eyes that are too weary to rest.
— The Woodworker, April 1933
Sticky? Yes. It’s made from three sticks. So it’s quite “sticky.”
I just finished up this campaign stool based (loosely) on A.J. Roubo’s model shown in “L’Art du Menuisier.” I turned round legs, whereas Roubo shows legs that are pie-shaped in section. When those legs fold together, they make a cylinder. Clever.
I know how to make legs like this, but I have to come up with a way to do this that doesn’t waste a lot of wood.
As I explained in an earlier post, the pivoting hardware is made using an eye bolt, all-thread rod, washers and acorn nuts. It looks OK, but I’m going to use different hardware for the next version to make it look bad-asser.
The leather, oiled latigo from the saddle industry, is great. Ty Black finished hand-stitching the seat last night. I attached the seat to the legs using No 10 x 1-1/4” solid brass screws from the maritime industry – they are sweet – plus some brass finishing washers from the home center that look like they had been hanging out there since Johnson was in office.
The stool sits really well. It barely weighs a thing. And it folds up nicely. That’s pretty good for a second prototype. But the next stool will be better.
— Christopher Schwarz
