Dovetails for Drawers – the European Way

[Music] so as a fee oak emitters a LeBlanc code bent oh I forgot we have to speak English but I speak very good Hungarian and a little bit of a language so you forgive me for my English accent but I try my best this is the driver from the showroom in the Queen and lowboy and I mill these pieces so you can see how this can relate to the driver we have the two sides with the groove plowed in it and then be gonna have the draw face and the back is cut shorter because the draw bottom gonna slide in from the back before I work on this rail driver I'm gonna talk to you a little more about tough telling if you look at this drower it's pretty much the same as that except has no lip no lip but a typical driver has opened up tears in the back and half lap in the front the pins are the straight ones and the tails going into them so if we wanna make dovetails we have to understand we're gonna put this wood into that that wood into that therefore if you wanna make a box ten inch by ten inch you need four pieces of wood ten inch long because they are going into each other to mark this thickness of the root to the face of the wood we use a marking gauge we set up the marking gauge exactly to the thickness of the wood and then we mark it we mark the face and the back on both pieces and then the hairpin what you're going to cut off you mark the end of it I cut the pins first I cut a half in another half in a full tail divide this in turn and cut more pins and then I have this doctor cut out so which cuts out the tails so these are my pins and from the pins I mark the tails put it on there and market the gravity is working with you that's why I say is easier to make the pins and then details because it's much easier to mark it this is the first time I'm using a pencil and simply now cut these out simply pay attention to the pencil lines and leave the pencil line on there on the tail side you leave the line on you can see the pencil line left on the tails I cut on the waist side if it's too tired dont force that just get a bigger hammer and this is my quick doctor's next thing I wanna show you how to lay out a simple 1/2 laptop there like this one the piece not coming through the front therefore it's half lap first thing we gotta mark is how deep the tails going to go into the face and we do that again with the marking gauge set it approximately believe about 3/16 in the face has to be more than on it because if you do it less and that it's very hard to chisel it's gonna break out easily depends on the thickness of the wood but I just sort of approximately leave on their traits of an inch this is how deep we gonna cut the same setting also has to be marked on the side of your driver because this is how deep your tails gonna be and you also mark the ends because this is gonna be cut off the hair feed so you mark both end you got to do one more marking and that is the thickness of the draw side which again you set up the marking issue the thickness of the wood and then then you mark it that's all the marking you need to do now your sawing is limited you have to cut between these two lines the reason I'm setting this high because I have to cut on an angle but I do the same thing as before cut a half pin another half inch cut a folktale divide this distance proximately in half and the varies proximal because we are making a template and the ludus fear that we doesn't really match just divide it very tastefully so these things going to be chiseled out and this we have to chisel with the chisel once we chisel them out simply remark from details just like before and then we can do the things if you do the same thing in pine in pine let's put on here quick line just like that this is gonna be the depth and this is how deep you wanna cut you do the same thing cut first with a soft half pin or there half a big tail divide this at once and twice and cut more pins because our cunning is limited many times what we do is a straight cardboard cabinetmaker scraper just the scraper you hammer in there that completes your cut and once you done with that you just chisel out the waste we played enough let's get to the real thing and make one problem for the green antelope boy I mill the pieces this gonna be the face the back and the two side what I'm doing is put a little scribble on the outside this is gonna be the top and the front of the to draw her I put a scribble on here this gonna be the top on the outside next marking we got to do with the marking gauge the back of the drower is an open dog tail so we mark this with a marking gauge again set up the marking gauge exactly to the thickness of the wood and mark mark the face in the back the marking gauge makes a very nice knife mark because my finishing nail in there is sharpened like this dowel it's feathered and rounded so when I am marking that at it it's cut a knife mark furthermore it is set up set up into the into the beam a little bit this way therefore when I pull it it's when I go in it can go in because the fence is holding it therefore it's very easy to mark with it so we mark this in the back both side and they mark the top because we know this gonna be cut off these are the half pins to mark the face to mark the face but I got to do is put this wood thickness on there hold it like that nice and flush on the outside put a dot on the inside pencil line using a little scrap wood which fills up the rabbit here now I can set up this marking gauge exactly to that line we have to considering the rabbit here once I set this up I simply mark it on both sides we have to do one more marking and that is how long the tails gonna be and that simply set up the marking gauge to this depth my tail is gonna go as deep as the lip of the draw you can see all the way they're gonna go therefore we have to set up the marking gauge from the outside of the walnut to the rabbit hold the marking gauge there and then lock it double check it that's exactly on and then mark the front what me marking now is the length or the depth of the of the tails and then we mark the top and bottom because these will be cut off the groove is plowed in this piece is ready therefore we know this gonna be the bottom of the driver and so us on the face and what's interesting about it is the bottom has no lip around it shaped the same way in the front but it is flush and the other thing is the groove in the draw face is deeper than in the side so when the bottom is pushed in a lot of shrinkage can happen and we will not see daylight through the face and walnut then I start cutting these pins we have to understand the tail have to cover up this groove therefore the half pin has to start at this corner and I cut this backwards because we are very limited therefore it's easier to go down like that so I simply I simply cut my have been starting right on this edge and I have to be careful not to cut in to my lip and stop at the marking gauge line I could have been another half pin got a full tail here which gonna cut out the groove as I said before divide this in thirds approximately and cut more pins when I was a pronoun sink I did the pins and the tail of the same size in American the last ten years or so I started to make my my pins a little smaller than dovetails I don't know why I hope you forgive me grandpa I changed your method a little bit I think it looks better if you have that if you have the pins a little smaller than dovetails however I'm still not doing very small pins like the English method what I do next because I'm gonna use the router believe it or not to help me chiseling with a white pencil I'm gonna mark all my saw marks so I can see easier when I cut this freehand with the router do the same thing on the other side let's understand something deadly I'm gonna use a rather was a helping tool to quicker the waste removal this has to come out from here and as long as I will clean up afterwards I will leave no rarer marks on the piece I always said if my grandfather would had a router he would use it so let's cut now the pins on the back of the drawer and that is an opened after therefore we cut it straight across have been another half in a full tail got this in half and come back to cut more pins and tails half pin so we have to chisel out these tails and we have to chisel out the tails on the on the walnut I made a jig to chisel the walnut but before I do so I use a beautiful micro fence plunge router base I put my boss ladder on it and I will use that to take out my wrist so I made this new jig because I have this beautiful new plunge router base from from micro fence the jig is very simply just a scrap plywood and what it does is pinches my face in in there so I can I can route it but it does is I put a block of wood on there for the right height and once I clamp it it holds it nice and tight put on my lights [Music] [Music] [Applause] to another round and do the same thing on the other side [Music] this beautiful router bit sure makes your job easier specialties little lights without these lights in a basement shop you would have a hard time to do that so what I did what I did is removed my waste I made sure I am a little bit short of the face all these little shoulders I have to chisel in that so what I'm gonna do next is clean up this with the chisel therefore you're not gonna see any router marks and I have to because I am not close enough to the to the line I need to so right now I can do any changes because this is only the pins so again we're making a template whatever I shape here little dis below that it doesn't matter I can change angles I can make the spins the same lines and I take off the from the face a little bit right there to have the right depth so if anybody would look at this over once I'm done with it they would swear that this is completely done by hand you would not think you would not think I use the round but it's a great helping tool especially on this wild green walnut I am using I also make curly curly maple lowboys it's just as difficult to work with as this very wild green American black walnut when you do the half pins even now you have to be careful not to push hard because they can split out so take it off little by little that changes I need now in the bottom corners to clean out I use this quarter inch chisel it's much faster this way then if you don't use the route that this text takes time to chisel out so much walnut so how much you fuss with that you just clean out most of it if you think about it's going to be completely covered with the tails so this is a matter of matter of finesse how fussy you want to be how much of a craftsmanship you want to put into that but the idea is to not to see any rather marks and make these things nice in parallel little different sizes it's almost must-have handwork has character for many many years I did restore antique zone and I studied dovetails and I kept looking at their tails because in America a lot of people measure dovetails and mark them and when I started working in America I was questioning my methods so I was disturbed and and looked into it and how more people I asked to dovetail from East Europe from different part of the world I find somebody from Guatemala Hector Ortiz is a cabinetmaker I went to his shop and I asked him to cut me some dovetails was very interesting because he didn't speak much English I didn't speak much English he said you'd you you you cabinet maker you dovetail and I explained to him I just want to know how he does it so he grabbed some cheeses a piece of scrap wood and he cut up those identical as my grandfather so I was very pleased you know Guatemala is Central America not just East Europe people cut dovetails that Lee in Guatemala people cutting ducktales my way and it's a very simple method to learn you just have to make up your mind to learn it once you start doing that you can do the same there that's all I'm gonna that's all I'm gonna fuss with that do the same thing on the other side I do I do a lot of woodworking shows and once I was going to the woodworking show I thought I have to dovetail for people why don't I take my queen and lowboy draw faces with me then I'm gonna cut doctors there it's just as well people gonna see the real thing but I had some real wild grain walnut and I start chiseling and when the grain is so wild you go this way you go that a couple of people came there and looked at me as they walk today these two friends I heard one telling the other one this guy don't know what the heck he is doing well I thought I would like to see you chisel this very wild grain you project like the cat some hot milk if you put hot milk for the cat the poor cat gonna go around and don't know how to start licking it sometime you go this way you go that way you have to find the grain not to cut against it but you have no choice you gotta cut down here and if you take very little slices it's gonna work very well that's all I'm gonna do with this you can clean this a lot more or less it's gonna be covered up by the tails and the back piece I'm gonna chisel on my adjust the bench this whole done works very use a block of wood not to Mar up my piece and just bracket how can you clamp something easier than that the reason for the different sized chisels is you want to use the widest chisel is the easiest put the chisel into the marking gauge line and just tap it and do the same thing from the other side so these are the pins look them over if there's anything need to be cleaned up a little bit go back to the bench and remark from the pins we're gonna mark the tails so we have the face we have the back you got a market I'm looking than my scribbles make sure they facing each other that's my draw face therefore I am putting this on it's hard to mess it up you have the grooves already plowed therefore it sits would be very difficult to make a mistake simply line it up and with a pencil line you mark the corners and then you flip it and do the other side so what I do next is flip this whole thing around so it's easier that way and then hold the scribble to the top put it on there and mark it again from here to there so if you never did that before what the heck you're looking at it's very simple to understand if this is here this has to go this has to go in there therefore I have to remove those pieces and we say cut on the west side means this is where I am sewing therefore turn this into sawdust make sure that tail will fit into there so if you if you never did that before first time maybe it imitated a little bit little bit difficult but we have to understand cut on the west side means leave the pencil line on the tails this is the tail this is the pin this is the hairpin once you understand that the rest of it is hands and eye coordination just simply clamp it into the bench and start cutting put my thumb there put the saw on start on a back stroke stop at the marking gauge line cut off those half pins this are just a little bit too aggressive to do cross cross grain cutting but I love it it's a beautiful soft cuts nice and fast now we're going to go to the adjust the bench and chisel out these same as chiseling the pins put chisel on the marking gauge line and just chisel down if I would work on four drawers I would have pieces piled up here sometimes as many as six pieces and then you just do the same work what I mean by that handwork is production once you start tapping you do all of it the same way keep going keep going before you change chisel and do all of it before you before you change position once you're done with once do the next step and do all the next step handwork is production what to do first what to do second that was make something fast that's it began chiseling the drower let's see how does it fit you need a good hard block so you're not going to chip out your corners and your hammer [Applause] [Music] there we have a drower get a little glue a little that's the open doctors and a half laptop tells what we do here is cut a draw bottom to this width before we glue this together we got to clean up the inside because I'll clean up the inside we gotta take away all the machine marks that's how I'm a good rubber I hope you're gonna try it I wish you lots of luck in your woodworking adventure you

Channel: Popular Woodworking

Views: 488,553

Rating: 4.9512696 out of 5

Keywords: Popular, Woodworking, dovetails, half-blind, through, frank klausz, drawer joiner, drawer

Id: vKuy3NdLhlE

Length: 32min 18sec (1938 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 04 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/weeeeelaaaaaah]

"If it's too tight don't force it - " expecting him to say file or sand down the parts that are too big "...just get a bigger hammer" :-O

[u/[deleted]]

Holy shit. He just whips out that giant coping saw thing and free-hands the dovetail cuts. That's complete confidence right there

[u/BushWeedCornTrash]

He makes it look so easy. A true master.

[u/AlwaysAppropriate]

/r/restofthefuckingowlwithblackmagic

[u/natnat87]

”Excuse me for my English “ proceeds to speak better English than most native speakers

[u/KnowsAboutMath]

Everything from 2:07 to 4:50 in that video was basically magic.

[u/turbodude69]

bravo sir! one of the best artisan videos i've seen in a long time. it's incredible how easy it makes that look. definitely never seen anyone freehand dovetails like that.

[u/congrue]

At 8:00, that’s something I haven’t seen before. Using a card scraper to finish the half lap tails.

[u/Dirty_Old_Town]

Holy shit. That would take me hours.