And now I have to match this to the
adjacent piece which already marked with the letter A so I'm going to mark this
one on the end as is pretty standard for dovetailing I'll lay my plane on the
side just as a platform you could use a piece of wood you could use just about
anything this just levels it gives me a platform that's very safe and secure and
now I line up these inside corners this is difficult for you to see right now so
what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn it around but I'm just showing you
this method so that you can see I'm going to actually turn my piece around
so that you can see what I'm doing I'm going to, this is an unusual way to do it
so but it will show you exactly what I'm doing so I've gone on this side so I've
lined up this inside corner with the inside face of my piece of wood that
guarantees the exact position then I come on the outside of each of these
dovetails just like this and that puts enough of a mark on there for me to see
exactly where I need to cut so I've got my marks these are very hard for you to
see I'm sure from where you are let me offer this to you so you can see my
knife wall here there there I've got knife walls now what I'm going to do now
this is the piece that I use so I'm going to go the same as I did before I'm
using my fingertips to give me the exact depth I'm going with a pencil line first
to put me in the right area actually I'm on the wrong side of the, no, I'm on
the right side I'm going to put the lines on your side as well which I would
not normally do because I can only see one side but this is just so you can see
the depth that I'm going to now on this end you remember I don't
know if you do but I have this type of template you have your angles on one
side and the square on the other so I'm going to use the square to make pencil
lines down this face here like this these need to line up with the exact
outline of the dovetail that you've scored with the knife we cut with the
knife the last one is there like this so now we're going to be removing this
section and this section so that's here and here so that's going to leave as a
pin a pin and the pin so these actually what we call tail recesses these are
what we call pin recesses so we'll be using pin recesses in that
on tails in this one so now I sawed down these walls yes now you got to get the
light just right with mahogany because it's very difficult to see sometimes
especially when you get past 60 I'm right on my line there down to just above my line which is not not very deep here I'm going to keep my body in
the same position follow the line this side we just make
this knife wall a little bit more clear for me you need the arm in line so that it's a
smooth alignment smooth cut don't go below your line if you did it wouldn't
be the end of the world on this project it might be on a competition piece or
whatever you're working on I feel now for my end grain here and right in
between the kerfs knife all very light passed together and then I can go as
heavily as I like and to transfer around the corner I'll make a nick on the
corner stand up into the knife nick on to this side and then right between the
cuts go with the, all right so I'm ready to remove this piece and this piece this
is very similar to what we just did we're going to deepen the knife wall with
a wider chisel I'm using a 3/4 inch chisel here we're going right on that
1/8 of an inch right from the line there and I just flick those and they then
will split down especially in this sapele it just flicks down to the depth
of the knife cut it's quite brittle so it works very nicely I like brittle
woods for this really top of the workbench so right with my
fingertips holding and then that first tap just locates the chisel in the
bottom of the knife wall listen so like that and then I can go as hard as I like
and I won't move that now for once I'm located especially in mahogany in pine I
might go a little lighter with my mallet blow so rock your chisel like this just rock
it rock it from side to side that makes the cut go easier step down and now you can see
I got a nice angled cut same in this side now
so with that mallet blow I'm probably already about almost halfway through
this mahogany in and out of the vise this is safety
and it's your safety and it's my safety oh you can't see as clearly as I can
here just the crispness of these knife walls that we created and the chisel cut
it's just absolutely dead sharp and if you can see here just how crisp and
clean this knife wall is but this is what makes for a proper dovetail, a
good seating, nice and level so back on the top just hold your chisel with your
fingertips and your thumb I can see this is not ready to break through yet but
it's pretty close it's just that there's a lot more resistance in this mahogany
than say you would get with pine or even oak it's just very resistant I think
this is why the Victorians when they discovered mahogany for so much of
the furniture I can imagine what they must have felt when they saw these
massive trees coming into Britain into the USA and they must have thought it
was a real gift to them at that time because it was so large these massive
sections we don't have that luxury anymore but hopefully
what we are doing in conservation is benefiting our next generation one of
the nice things about using solid wood is we are making generational furniture
we are making furniture designed and intended to last at least a couple of
hundred years so we don't have the you know, the different manufacturers
model so I'm going in here just cleaning out the inside corner like this just
just I've choked up on my chisel which means I'm not letting the chisel go here
I've got my finger against the back of this back wall of the box it's actually
the outside wall and I'm making sure I don't overshoot because it can split the
inside walls now we try that dovetail in there like this and we can just press
that wrong way with my fingertips so this just goes in if you waggle this
down at this end here and press with your thumb and forefinger you should end
up with a pretty good decent joint in there usually I'll tap this down with
the hammer and I've got a nice nice joint here and all I've got to do now is
make the other side and then we'll be ready to do the front so got my back
dovetail cut here the twin dovetails and now I want to do the dovetail on the
front and so I'm going to have a lower aspect to this box like this so and then
I made just taper this side here so I want to show you an aspect of the
dovetail it's not going to be much different than this one here we've got this one on
the corner so it has the square aspect of the dovetail going
through from this side and square on the top and I'm going to do the same on this
one and I think this will make this a nice nice box you can do you can adapt
anything that we're doing here you could do business card holders card holders
all kinds of things you can do things for the house you could do napkin
holders so many different things first what I'm going to do is lay this on here
just to help me visualize where I'm cutting my dovetail I'm gonna just mark
this here not for any reason just to give me some height on the sides because
I'm going to be cutting this I could cut a scalloped like this or I can cut a
straight taper which is probably what I'm going to do at this stage I'm going
to do that I think so let's set this aside we're going to make a dovetail on
this I've picked the inside and outside looks pretty much the same to me but
I've got it planed I've got the end squared so I'm going to measure my
dovetails now I measured it down on this one quarter of an inch and not from
the bottom quarter of an inch and I'm going to repeat that here so here I make
a mark quarter of an inch quarter of an inch that's going to give me an inch and
a half wide dovetail do the same on this end quarter and a quarter then the
dovetail template right inside here my angle this pencil shows up better on the dark
wood – it's not too bad if you go really dark sometimes with Rosewood you can't
see your pencil line you have to use a white pencil so I'm going to take again
this packer at the back to extend the width so that I'm you know more
accurately square across when I come to cut so just flush that with the top of
the piece of wood it's useless so square your line across like this
this just it gives you that little extra that you need, because I'll start on the
very back if you remember before we put that knife across and I'll just repeat
that just to let me see how I can do this so you can see right on there so
I'm using the knife to create a knife wall it's just these are little tricks
if you're working on something that's particularly exacting these are little
tricks that you can use that will increase your accuracy so I'm going in
here and I'm going to make a knife wall there and I'm also going to do it on my
mahogany and I love the way it just pops up when you're using these dense grained
hard woods that wood just pops right up you can't see this but can trust me that that's what's
happening there we go so now I set my saw in that back of the
little recess saw across so I'm square and I'm actually pretty perpendicular at
the moment but now I've got that start I angle my saw to the dovetail line just
above my line thumb on the side let it guide you you know that the saw was with
some jagged somehow there and sometimes that's the grain in the wood a lot of
times we want to go in with more force when actually what we should be doing is
lifting and suspending the saw so that's what I did then to get that to work the
square across and then at my angle a lot of pieces that I see old pieces the
dovetail saw run past the lines and everything because they were under
pressure those guys were dovetailing many sets of drawers in a day it was a
very different world than we're living in today so now I've got my line here
I'm going to still use the side of my box use two finger finger that exact
line like that let me check that these are the same thickness that's great going here and then this side so I go
with a light pass and a heavy pass into that nick onto the end this needs to be
dead square then I flip over so my square registers against the same long
edge if you're square with your square and
you've got this nice crisp clean line that this virtually guaranteeing your
box is going to be square I want to show you something that I'm going to do now
so I'm going to remove these two corners but while I've got this together I'm
going to place this right on that knife line that I just cut on this inside
corner here because I want this inside to be perfectly parallel
I can always plane the outside now I've got that set I can take my knife right
here on that inside corner and that guarantees that the inside distance is
between the two outside walls are perfect I'm going to click down this
wall the same as I did with my packer on the back I'll do this so you can see so I'm right
on my pencil line keep your pencil sharp all the time so I'll go right on there
light and then heavy then in here so I'm doing the pine one the backer
first and then I'm doing the hardwood one and that stops right on that knife
wall holding my saw now I'm holding my saw this is a an old 17th century saw my
finger goes under here this fingers pointing and I go square across first
just to get the grain pushing in the opposite direction from me one of these
I've got a knife wall somewhere there's just lots of times people will show you
using a marking gauge and that's a very traditional way too I just don't like the
way it looks on fine work but some people love the way it looks and that's
great if people like that's fine this is fairly thin stop to be making dovetails
in but they look lovely when they're done I'm going to show you how far from the
line I've stopped here can you see that there
I just want to make sure you can see that I don't go down to the line I
stopped just above it this is about a thirty-second above the line so just to
give you a clearer view so I'm going to cross cut these end pieces off so chisel
into here now with this sapele the grain can just about going any direction so
you have to be careful and it's brittle, like that one just went straight
away I'll go in here right up against that knife wall going here just chisel down, the knife
wall guides me now because I just saw slightly away from my from my line same
on this side here make sure that inside corner is crisp see I'm choked up on my chisel so I
don't overshoot, just cleaning up those corners to make sure nothing snags me
now this goes make sure your bench top is clean align
this I'm going to line one end up and line the other end up because sometimes
this box may but maybe slightly twisted so I'm working more to align these
inside corners here in here than I am this outside face because if this
protrudes I can just simply plane it off another thing you might want to do and
I'm going to do is I'm going to put this in the vise and I'm going to do an
unusual way I'm going to do it this way so that you can see how I'm marking this
so I'm going to normally I wouldn't do it this way it's not the best way but it
will work for this so I'm going to line the inside corner up flush the
bottom here and you can use a straightedge if you need to if you want
to just to line that up I'm going to go with my fingertips right on this inside
corner now there's no margin there right on to that inside corner and
I'm going to go to this side do the same you know you can't really see this but make sure you mark these here because
they could flick the other way around A A B B and I should have marked this one
too shouldn't I just check where I am they're probably close I think it's the
other way yeah good point they really just make sure you mark your pieces so
I'm going to go A and A because these are different sizes and B B nice and
clear so here I want the pencil lines as a rough guide again on this side so I'm
flushing the outside here and I'm making my mark here and then this is the
outside of my box so I'm cutting from the outside towards the inside and the
reason I do that is because when I'm sawing
I want these unsupported fibers here on this back edge I don't want them to
break I would rather they break on the inside than on the outside
that's the argument for cutting the tails first rather than the pins so I've
got this laid out so right on that knife wall this time of course I'm vertical if you're going to
err on the side of caution in any way always cut on the inside of your line on
the waste wood that will be removed if you don't then the joints going to be
loose you if you go right on that knife line it will probably be just fine
because the knife point goes barely under the inside corner usually fingers
here right in between now I'm remembering which edge I've registered
this square on but I'm going to make a small knife nick here put my knife in
there go to this side flip over this is the best knife I've ever found for
dovetails it's a Stanley, disposable blades that can be resharpen for about
two years gives me the perfect point for getting inside corners there got my
knife wall both sides notice I angle into the vise so I can
put the right pressure on the width of this so I feel secure, chisel about 1/8
of an inch from the knife wall and just chisel in work across flick with your
thumb you want to see this but right in here
I've got a very definitive step down now and I think that's so important that you
have that knife wall because that's where your chisels going to register in from
the other side you work towards the middle you really can't go all the way
through without risking damage to the inside or outside face, over my
bench leg fingertips down at the base of the chisel check yourself and then pop
it can't quite get the corner there,
if you don't have the upper body weight physical strength I'm
using my body weight and strength and experience to rock this chisel into that
corner but you could just as easily go with the chisel hammer and there's
nothing wrong with that so yeah I don't feel like you're cheating or something
there's more than one way to do this so you could especially on some of the very
dense less absorbing woods where you can't get in this would work fine now
here I'm going to show you I'm chiseling this way I'm going down here but then
let me just show you to camera just I'm going to angle over here to catch, so
follow the rake of the dovetail like that like that and then in the middle
here tight up against the knife wall it will just help you to see and the same
from this side I go down here first but then I'm going to angle my chisel over
to follow the rake of the dovetail, back in the vise we're almost through but
there's a lot of resistance on this mahogany
I should explain too, I don't know whether I have in the past but something I want
to show you is why do we go in at this angle from this outside edge and keep
the rim of the dovetail there's a very good reason that we do this see this here I've kept this outside rim
here dead straight so that when this is placed on the bench when I drive the
chisel which is a single sided wedge here this side of the bevel is catching
the bottom of here if this if I had just split this across this way then that
would be forced down and it could tear those end grain fibers so this works to
prevent that so I keep the rim on both sides on this particular type of
dovetail so I'm angling my chisel just to follow the rake and I'm almost at the
point of breakthrough here so I'm being careful not to break through too soon I
don't just stretch the fibers or tear the end grain because it's not
really as I've said so many times it's not what you make that brings
fulfillment it's how you make it really this is real woodworking we're really
working real wood with real hand tools so this mahogany is just
lovely to use you can see inside here you see nice crisp work line see this is
nice and crisp along here so watch what happens now fingertips right at the
bottom work across now I know I'm almost through so I'm
careful not to hit too hard listen now pretty close still not there
yet so this next one will probably do this can flop around here so be careful
when you apply pressure that you don't lose control so I'm angling my chisel
first to the rake then in that middle so I'm going from the outside a little bit
of breakout inside it but not not a lot so I'm choking up on my chisel choking
again on my chisel so I don't overshoot into my left hand careful just to tease
out those fibers separate them this corner remember to work safely
every time I've had an accident I've always pretty much known it was going to
happen just before it happened because I had a sense that something was going
wrong so you take responsibility just as I am now so this is A and that one was A
I think no B that wrong this goes on here and I can already feel this seating
but remember that little trick I showed it's already partway in as you can see
it's self-supporting but there's a little thing that I do on the inside of
all of my dovetails and it's become something of a trade
mark I suppose is I take my chisel right on this inside edge here and I just make
a lead-in on that on that underside within, not touching the outside rim of any of the
dovetail and that gives me an easy start to the dovetail so here just with my
thumb watch here a waggle this press with my thumb and wiggle this down until
I'm flush you seat it there and I think you'll see very nice dovetail here and
now I just have to cut the other one the other recess on the other and then we'll
show you the finished box when it's assembled
