Incidental Boxes

[Bart]

Holy moly Sir, those boxes are amazing. Your "practice" boxes are better than I can ever hope to aspire to. Thank you for sharing!

[Eric.]

2 hours ago, Bart said:

Holy moly Sir, those boxes are amazing. Your "practice" boxes are better than I can ever hope to aspire to. Thank you for sharing!

Thanks Bart.  I think you underestimate yourself.  If you can put together that beast of a shelving unit you can cut some dovetails.  Just takes practice.

[Isaac]

On ‎8‎/‎19‎/‎2016 at 4:43 PM, Eric. said:

Yes the last one is entirely cocobolo and is the aforementioned "important project."

My dovetail process...yes tails first, yes coping saw, I just wing layout with eyeballs and squares.  I prefer small pins so that usually dictates my layout.

The holes in the cherry boxes I just used a forstner bit and some sandpaper to soften the edges.  On the cocobolo lid I used a die grinder and flame-tip burr and carved it freehand into an organic shape.  There was swirling grain at that spot that kind of curled over into an O shape that just called me to do it.

Working on my dovetail methodology here. I'm trying to take your advice on going for narrower pins. Do you draw out all the pins and tails and then proceed to cut, or do you cut the tails and use that to layout the pins? The challenge I'm having is with narrow pins, it is difficult to get in there to trace for the pin layout accurately.

Also, when you say you wing the layout, do you wing it once and then duplicate it for the other three corners, or wing it all four times?

[wtnhighlander]

A long-bladed marking knife, or a sharp ice pick, make it much easier to trace those narrow pins from the tail board.

[Eric.]

11 hours ago, Isaac Gaetz said:

Also, when you say you wing the layout, do you wing it once and then duplicate it for the other three corners, or wing it all four times?

Correct, I lay out on one tail board and match that layout on the other three.

I lay out for the tails, cut the tails, transfer the tails to the pin boards.  You'll need a decent marking knife to get into skinny pin sockets for the transfer.  A scribe will probably be too fat and I don't care for the lack of precision when marking with a scribe.  Any thin-bladed marking knife should do though.  I like skinny pins, not anorexic pins...if you can't get a marking knife into the socket, they're probably too skinny.  About 1/16" gap at the end of the board is the smallest I'll go, but numbers don't mean anything...just large enough to get a marking gauge in there is what I aim for.