Dovetails By Hand - Chiseling Tips & Tricks

hi i'm rob cos and welcome to my shop dovetails by hand chiseling tips and tricks this is the weakest skill no matter where i go and teach dovetails and i'm going to show you what to avoid and how to get perfect dovetails especially dealing with the chiseling portion stay with us i'm rob cosman and welcome to my shop we make it our job to help take your woodworking to the next level if you're new and you haven't subscribed please do so hit the notification bell so you'll receive alerts when we release a new video and anytime we use a special tool we'll always leave a description down below all right let's get to work i teach lots of people how to cut the dovetails it's numbering in the multiple thousands and it's interesting that in a one-day class that sawing skills can get so advanced that they can the average student can assemble their joint right from the saw by that i mean they don't have to go in and do any pairing however the areas that involve chiseling always show as the worst part of the joint and on something like this we're talking about this joint line that joint line and on this side this this and that joint line now part of it is chisels that aren't properly prepared part of it is chisels that aren't properly sharpened i'll cover a little bit of that but mostly i want to focus on the actual technique of using the chisel assuming that it is good and sharp i'm going to go through them one at a time i'm going to give you all the tips and tricks that i know that will make you better at doing this going to require a bit of practice but if you know what to do and the pitfalls to avoid you're bound to get better at this and we'll also show you ways that you can go in without having to test fit but you can evaluate whether or not that joint is going to work perfectly before you actually put it together obviously we've got to start this conversation by talking about the instruments we're going to use and what i have here are two chisels and my mallet i'm going to start with the mallet i prefer what most people would call a carver's mallet now the option to that would be more of a hammer style mallet and i have got a friend that makes these and they do he does a beautiful job on them however the problem i find with a hammer style mallet is if you happen to hit a little bit off center it's going to glance off i don't know what it is about this but i find that i don't even have to be looking and i can always tap it and get it right on by the way this is made with a maple but it is a resin impregnated head so in a vacuum chamber they pull out the air replace it with a resin so when we turn these they come out nice and heavy and hard very durable so you want a mallet that you're going to be comfortable with by the way we tape the handles just to improve the grip now let's talk chisels first thing you have to know is you have to have side clearance so this is called a beveled edge chisel that means the bevel is on the edge so that when you're getting in between two tails to clean out this area you have to have enough clearance so that you don't bruise the side of the tail and a lot of chisels actually put the bevel up on the top as opposed to on the side big problem not only do you want the bevel on the side but if you allow that side bevel to go right to the back with a little bit of slope on there this becomes a very sharp edge almost such that you cut your hands with it so you have a little bit of a flat landing not too much but just enough so that it'll protect you when you're holding on to this because usually when i'm chiseling i'm holding down there very low very close to the cutting edge so that's the overall shape now you'll notice that i have two that have different looking bevels what i've discovered is if you're going to deal with pine if you decrease your primary bevel i actually take it down to 17 degrees whereas a standard bench chisel is going to be anywhere from 25 to 30 degrees what i discovered was dropping the primary bevel down to 17 degrees allowed me to go in and cut those very soft woods without crushing the fiber now if you try to use that on hard wood there just isn't enough metal out there to prevent that from breaking or bending whereas this is almost too blunt to use on soft woods so that i use for things like pine aspen alder this would be for all the other woods including the exotics then we're going to go in and we're actually going to work on the pin portion of a joint and i'll show you all the techniques involved there now when it comes to doing the pin portion you always want to try to get this right so that you can assemble right from the saw but occasionally you're going to make a mistake so i'm going to try to do that now and when i say make a mistake i'll try to do this one right first correct means sawing and keeping it parallel to the line stopping right at the baseline incorrect means we slope out a little bit so i'll purposely do that so if you look at that you can see how i didn't stay parallel to my line and we'll go in and correct that now i'll quickly go through and do these so we have another socket to work on all right give me a second to get rid of this waste okay before we start pointing out any particular errors let's talk about posture i always start chopping on the inside of the joint first so when i say the inside this is going to be the face so when we assemble the two pieces they're going to go together like that the reason i do that you chop the first chop is going to go part way through the second chop is going to finish the cut so what when you start the beginning you're going you've got resistance ahead of the chisel preventing it from going all the way when you do the second chop at some point you're going to break through you always run the slight risk that you're going to go through and damage this bottom side providing that happens i'd rather have it on the inside of the joint than on the show side so it may only be a 5149 split but i want it in my favor so start on the inside finish from the outside so here we go always position the wood so that you can see plumb meaning you want your chisel to be at least if not perpendicular slightly undercut never sloping like this if you chop this way you have no way of being able to see that so i always i'm in the habit of holding it like this we'll do this one first you'll notice there's not a lot of wood left on the waist side of the gauge line over here there is so i made a bad cut with my fret saw i got a lot of material here's the problem the more material you have over here the more pressure is applied to the bevel side of the chisel pushing the chisel this way and possibly forcing it behind your gauge line on the show side or on the face side that would show as a divot looks really bad so if i was starting up here the first thing i would do with my chisel would be to come in and i would take about half of that material just one little chop is all it takes just enough so that when i now lay my chisel right in the gauge line it's going to get down in there a little bit before the pressure of that waste starts to build up by now i've got lots of material on this side preventing that chisel from moving so i'm going to go about halfway now let me talk a little bit about the positioning there's a couple of ways i do it and i find that i change around once in a while but i hold my right hand on the board holding it in place i never clamp it down i just don't think it's necessary i use my thumb as a guide if you have a really good marking gauge line the chisel will fall into that gauge line and you want to know that it's there now i'm holding this chisel by the handle and i want to make sure that if i'm either level a pardon me plumb or slightly forward meaning a very slight undercut anything in the opposite direction is going to leave a bump on the bottom of the socket and require a lot of extra work to fix it will not allow the joint to close so after a while you'll get the hang of this but in the beginning try having a little square there just to show that you're slightly forward or undercutting a little bit now you'll also notice that this socket is going to be more than two moves of this half inch chisel so what i'm going to do is i went all the way over to that pin and i'm going to go all the way over to this pin on the second cut i'll show you why about halfway now that leaves me just a little bit if that little bit were left over here what often happens because you have to attack it with just the corner of the chisel as you start pounding the chisel wants to twist like this and in doing so you might end up digging in and going below your gauge line whereas if i can put that little bit of material right here in the middle of the chisel then i have support on both sides preventing that chisel from twisting and it'll stay parallel to the gauge line okay now on this one where i have very little material on the wayside i don't have to worry about doing that preliminary chop i'll just come along here drag that across until i find that gauge line come over to the opposite edge and then hit the middle okay now you don't want any debris to be between the two pieces it'll leave bruises so sometimes i'll just go and break off some of that so it doesn't end up accidentally falling down there i don't notice it and the next thing you know i've got big dents to deal with okay now the little tip here you'll notice that the pin is sloped if i can match the slope with my chisel i can actually save myself some work so again holding it in the position so i can see plumb i'm going to come right over to the pin get my chisel in there so i can feel it engage the first chop is going to be very light i just want to register the chisel then i'm going to tip it forward and what i'm attempting to do is find that same slope that's on the side of the pin if i do it right as i mentioned i can i can completely eliminate one of the steps go slow as you make it all the way through so you don't end up breaking out the inside and damaging something come over here move it over until you feel it engage make sure it's registered first one's light angle it slightly chop through now this one i can just catch it with actually i can't quite yeah i did i didn't leave anything on there again this one too much way too much material way too much that'll put so much pressure it'll push that bevel back that chisel back so i'm gonna come in i'm gonna cut that by about two-thirds just one quick little chop all you're wanting to do here is just make it so that the first 30 second of an inch or so of penetration that the chisel does into the wood is not going to be hampered by pressure from the waste once you're down to 30 second you now have enough supporting material over here that that chisel is not going to move on you a little chop angle it slow down as you get to the middle so you don't go blasting through the other side and then again hold it there you go another technique is to hold down here and use your fingers to help guide that i find that this one sometimes is more comfortable just use my thumb to move it over until it locks in there but you have to have a really good marking gauge that will give you a nice severed line not crushed fibers so that when you're dragging that chisel across there when it finds it you'll actually hear it lock right in there and there's no second guessing where it should be it's in the spot i always work from the face in so this is the side you're going to see when the joint is assembled again i'm going to be pairing in these corners so i don't want to risk damaging out here and if there's going to be any risk i'm going to make it on the side that's going to be least visible so i now i had to hold the chisel in such a way that it's going to allow me to push this chisel through that difficult end grain without losing control but allowing me to use lots of force so what i'll do because i'm right-handed i squeeze the chisel firmly up here i'm going to use my front of my index finger to anchor it against the face of the joint lots of pressure here back pressure you'll call it my right hand my power hand which is going to be right in line with my body so that i can actually push using my legs and the weight the weight of my upper body to help push that chisel through the wood by the way this is a piece of northern white pine it's very easy to chisel and it's nice to start practicing with something like this because you can refine your technique without having to provide the extra muscle to get through the more difficult timbers so we just want to get rid of any debris that's left in here especially right in the corner this is the stuff that tends to hide that's going to cause you a little bit of grief so you want to come in here use the corner of that chisel to make sure that that's nice and clean and if there's a little bit left on the side just finish that cut now why i had to do that my chis my saw stopped right on the baseline i did a slight undercut so there's going to be a little bit of material left on the side of that pin to get rid of and that's what i just did and we'll come over and now here's a good example you'll notice over here i don't have any debris in there take that out of there and that's pretty much good to go because i was able to slope that chisel and follow the side of that pin over here looks to be almost the same maybe just a little bit i don't and don't worry about what's going on in here that's end grain so it doesn't count as an effective glue surface as long as you're touching on the outside edges it's going to be good if you got a little bit of fiber failure in here it's not a problem now we'll check this one as well you would think you would turn this around and approach it from this side but you can gain enough control by holding that chisel firmly that you can do everything you need to do without worrying about blowing a piece off that back now just get rid of that all right so the bottom looks nice and clean i don't think there's any bumps i'm going to verify it by using this little two inch square and i'm going to go in here and i'm going to set it on that socket and i should be able to move it side to side without feeling any bumps in the middle if it rocks at all then you know you've got a high spot what's the problem with the high spot in the middle well you close your joint and the first thing that happens is it touches here first before it registers or closes out here and now you have a gap so you want to always want to make sure that if it isn't perfectly square across there that it's slightly undercut and the easiest way to do it as i mentioned is just to move your square back and forth and you should be able to feel it registering on the outside edges nothing touching in the middle same thing over here so we don't have any issues if we did and this is a difficult procedure because it just adds so much work what i typically would have students do is come in here and draw a little line right there and right here now what we're going to do with that line is we're not going to step outside of it so if that was a little bit high i would put my chisel right on there actually let me do this correctly i'd start on this side put my chisel edge right on that line angle it down and head to the middle now the reason i turned it around on this chop i'm eventually going to break through and there's nothing supporting the chisel tip and if i blow something out again i'd rather have it on the inside than on the outside right on the line and just go until you meet that area that you stopped chiseling from the other side get into the corner and then verify it okay now our next move is to go in and check and make sure that this joint is going to go together the way we expect that means that the sides of these pins we cut must be square to the bottom of the socket or plumb and the easiest way to do it this is the reason why we use this little steel square we've got a good reference surface on the bottom and we've got a solid patch right here setting the square on the bottom and keeping it there slide it over and when it gets to this side it should touch up the face and across the end and as long as it does you know you're good to go that one doesn't need any attention however over here i can already tell that i've got some pen line left down here so there's no way that that side was cut plumb it is sloping towards the inside of the socket so when i do this and move it over what happens doesn't come close now the first thing i want to make sure is that i don't just have some debris down in here so what i'll do before i start any major surgery i'll come in and i'll just check the very bottom using the corner of the chisel just go along there and get rid of any of that junk try it again keeping it flat on the bottom of the socket move it over and as you can tell i'm far away from making a contact if i were to ignore that and put the joint together what you have to realize is the space between this wall and this wall at the top is greater than it is at the bottom and since the top spacing came from the tail meaning the tail is that wide we're going to try to force it into a narrower spot and something has to give and most likely it's going to take this half pin and push it over until you get a split right down there well we certainly don't want that before i address this one i'm going to note it let's come over and check this one on the member i actually have students that would come in here and they would lean it forward no don't do that it has to stay seated on the bottom move it over now it's not making contact again i'm going to go in and check to make sure that there isn't just some debris in there and i think that may have been the problem come down from the top i'm not pairing i'm just finishing the cut as i mentioned i stopped at the baseline but since i had that slightly undercut there's going to be a little bit of material left right there at the bottom on the side of that pin check this one again yeah that's good i'm not going to mess with that let's try it on this side sometimes you need some light to see looks like there's some debris right there there is if you can see it so we got to get rid of that this is where you want really sharp chisels and the primary reason is this the sharper the chisel or any tool for that matter the less effort required to make it cut the less effort required to make a cut the more control you have it's why it's always been said that the dull tool is the dangerous tool because it requires so much extra effort and that increased effort comes at the sacrifice of control try this again move it over nice and tight touching at the top touching down the face so we don't have to worry about that one but this one's a problem now there's a couple of things that we can do the first one is the easiest one we can pair right we can pair down from the top however we always run the risk that the grain is going to be running in this direction if it is we start chiseling here and the next thing you know the fibers are going to start breaking out this way if it goes the other way not an issue so here's how i do it i'll start on the inside remember we're going to see this we're not going to see this in the assembled joint so assuming that this dimension right up here is correct i'm going to come within oh just a 30 second or so of the top and holding it what i think is plum i'm going to pair down now if it pairs nice and clean then i know i'm safe to do it out here if it tears back in here i know i've got a problem and i can't do it out here without risking tearing it off that one actually came out nice and clean so all i have to do is get this one correct and then use that surface to come out here and continue it on that little strip out at the front now we don't know if we've got it right yet however the fact that i still see ink on there tells me that we're probably going to have to remove some more material come in here with our little square and check move it over and we're not touching so we still have a little more to take so i'm going to do that same thing again i'm going to come in the back step just inside pair straight down and then use that as a guide and come in here get rid of any of that debris now you might be asking what if we went the other way what if we'd undercut how do we fix it we'll address that one in a minute let's deal with this one first move that over we still have a gap now i'm going to look back here and see what's going on and it's back here as well so i still haven't paired down there with the chisel held plum i'm still a little bit to one side so i'll come in and do it again don't start at the top you don't want to you don't want to mess with this shape up here we're assuming that we transferred pins from the tails correctly and this is optimum so we're going to come in so we're just down inside there a little bit i'm pushing with my thumb sliced off some more if you want you can come in here and reference off of that surface and use it just to finish that little strip in the front i'm just using the corner of my chisel to go in there and sever that shaving to make it easier to remove make sure there's nothing left in that corner set that on there remember don't tip it move it forward that looks good at the front but there's something going on here at the back i'm hoping it's just some debris so we'll go in here again and try it this is a good reason why you should practice your sawing because if you have to go back and start fist fixing half of your pins you could have done another corner in the time it's going to take you to get this one corrected there's still something there good things is it's only in the back okay we're tight here but when i hold that i'm not quite closing in the back the good news is the front part that shows is okay this part that needs to be repaired isn't going to be shown any is seen anyway so i don't have to worry about being quite as careful so i'm going to come in i'm going to do a little more pairing in that back corner remove that waste and try that again okay so now we're touching up the front and across the top now that one's done ready to assemble now what if the grain had been running the wrong way and we couldn't do it the other option is to come in and pair straight across cutting across the grain that's a little trickier because your you don't have the same level of or they don't have the same support for the chisel you almost have to start in midair but i would come up here assuming that this corner is correct and giving myself a little something to hold on to or to support my chisel come in and just tip that chisel down picking up a shaving and then going across and when you get here if you want to avoid busting a piece off the back you can just lift up and come down now we don't need to correct this one but i'm going to go and do that again and rarely are you going to get it right the first time in fact you almost don't want to if there's a lot of material to remove you're far better off to take a little bit three or four times which gives you lots of control than to try to go in and remove it all at once and risk wrecking something so i'd come back in take a little bit more move across and as you get toward the back side just come up and then slide down the whole time you're using the surface that you've cut to guide your chisel by laying that flat chisel in there which by the way is another reason why you want the backs of your chisel to be as flat as you can possibly get them that way you know that when you set the chisel in there you know exactly when it's going to start to engage if it's not flat you're having to move it out out until you finally find the point where the tip starts to cut the wood very frustrating one final check would be to go in with your square and verify that all of those pin walls are standing plumb or square to the bottom of the socket and now as long as you did your transfer correctly up here that joint is going to work put glue on it put it together the one time you do not have to test fit every time you test fit you risk bruising this and the joint fits best that first time but it's got to be right and hopefully you can use these tips to verify it before you put that glue and drive it home if you enjoy my method of work and like my style of teaching click on any one of these videos to help take your woodworking to the next level now i've always said better tools make the job so much easier if you click on the icon with the plane and the chisel it'll take you to our website introduce you to all of our tools that we actually manufacture right here as well as our workshops both in person and online good luck

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 67,110

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Id: WUSo2wp3qPk

Length: 28min 26sec (1706 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020