NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1983, No. 43, $3.50 Making ... - Wood Tools

Cutting Dovetails With the Tablesaw
A versatile way to join a stack of drawers
by Mark Duginske
For joining such basic casework as small boxes, chests and
drawers, I've always felt that there was a missing link
between the tedium of hand-cutting dozens of dovetails and
the faster method of producing monotonous-looking joints
with a router jig. With that in mind, I developed this tablesaw
dovetail method which combines hand-tool flexibility
with power-tool speed and accuracy.
With this technique, you can vary both the width and the
spacing of the pins and tails for praaically any aesthetic effect.
The blocks that set the spacing are self-centering and will
produce perfect-fitting, interchangeable joints, eliminating the
need to mark boards so that individual joints will fit, as with
hand-dovetailing. Besides a good combination sawblade and
dado head for your tablesaw, you'll need a marking gauge, a
bevel gauge and a couple of sharp bench chisels. Before proceeding,
screw a wooden fence to the saw's miter gauge. A
3-in. by 20-in. fence will safely support most work.
Begin by squaring the ends of the boards to be joined.
Take your time with this step-inaccurately prepared stock
virtually guarantees sloppy results. I spaced the pins equally
for the 4X-in. wide drawer parts I'm joining in the photos.
You can mark the pin centers directly on the pin boards, or,
as I did here, you can just cut the spacer blocks to create
whatever spacing you want the pins to have. In any case, the
width of the blocks should equal the distance between pin
centers. You'll need one block for each full pin, plus one.
The pin size is also controlled by the blocks. When they're
lined up edge-to-edge, the total width of all the blocks
should be less than the width of the stock by an amount
equal to the width of the narrow part of each pin, that is, on
the outside
this
face of the pin board. I chose
be
X-in. pins for the
drawer sides shown in figure 1; if you want finer pins, decrease
dimension. The blocks must of consistent width,
so I crosscut them from the same ripping, then sandpaper off
any fuzzy corners so that they'll line up with no gaps. To
mark the depth of the pin and tail cuts, set your marking
gauge to the stock thickness, and scribe a line on the faces of
the pin board and on the face and edges of the tail board.
Cut the tails first with the saw arbor (or table) tilted to
80°, an angle that I've found produces the best combination
of appearance and strength. A bevel gauge set at 80° can be
used to set both the sawblade for the tails and, later, the
miter gauge for the pins. As shown in figure 2, position and
damp
be
a stop block to the miter-gauge fence so that when all
the blocks are in place, a half-pin space of the correct size will
CUt. At its narrowest width, the half-pin space should
equal the narrow width of a pin. Raise the sawblade until it
CUtS right to the gauge line, then, with all the blocks in place,
begin cutting the tails, flipping the board edge-for-edge and
end-for-end (photo, right). Continue this process, removing a
spacer block each time, until all the tails are cut.
A good-quality carbide-tipped blade will saw crisp pins
50
Fig. 1: Anatomy of a dovetail
Half-pin
Outside face
Cut pins on fronts
and backs of drawers,
or tops and bottoms of carcases.
I, j
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Ta
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il 'boar�
Socket
In Duginske 's tablesaw dovetail method, the tails are made first
in a series of cuts with the table or arbor set at 800• After each
series, a spacer block is removed and the cuts are repeated for the
next tail. The last tail is made with one block in place.
PhO[()s: Bill Scankus; drawings: David Dann