How to cut a DOVETAIL HALVING JOINT by HAND

hello everyone we're not quite on to actual dovetails yet but in this video I'm gonna be showing you how to cut a dovetail tee having joint absolutely rock-solid of a joint and quite a fun variation to make on your traditional carving joint so let's go okay so if you haven't already be sure to watch my last video I did on how to cut a corner having joint link is up here because this joint starts from a point that was covered in the last video and there's no point we going over again because many of you are going to be watching this as a series and it would get quite repetitive otherwise so anyway in close let's see how to mark this thing out before going anywhere with this tools you're going to need for this joint our crosscut saw rip saw sliding bevel a pen or pencil a marking gauge a marking knife a square and a ruler so firstly we are going to mark out the dovetail right so firstly obviously we've got to focus on the face side so I've already drawn this one on here that's going that way and then I've got one on this opposite component going this way so they're going to go together like this and that way when I look at the joints I know that this face side and this face edge is looking at my face so there we go I'm going to see those and this one here obviously that face I could go either way there's no particular outside face for that the way I've done it is so that the flick on this face side and the flick on that face side is going the same way I'm going to say it's like a heart but it's really not is it it's not that they're flicking the same way so thing to note here I said that the preparation of this joint is very similar to a corner having joint which it is the only difference you got to do is you have to square that shoulder line all the way around on all four faces on here so again when you're doing that make sure that you're referencing it off that face side all times and when it comes to squaring this one across you're squaring it off your face edge do not do it off the other one because that will mean that it's not accurate so that has squared round on all four sides and now we can start marking out the dovetail now dovetail ratios I kind of follow them but I don't get too fussy about it so I just think if that looks roughly about right which it does that'll do for me so what I'm going to do is get this sliding bevel right on the corner there then I'm simply just going to mark that down to the shoulder line leaving you Jesus pain soon this one's not working aha there we go right there we go there is our dovetail joint and we can see that it's going to go on like this so first things do we need to cut this out with a sleaze so to the vise now if you're new to Soaring it will be difficult to start the saw right on the corner here and follow that line so it suggests maybe in setting that line a couple of millimeters so then you have a proper flat surface to get started on for me I'm going to start it right on the edge so this is a tenon saw it's obviously quite overkill for this but my dovetail saw doesn't have the required depth to be able to cut this joint so now while I'm doing this if you haven't already be sure to watch my video on how to saw correctly because this will give you a lot of guidance for this process and it will make it a lot easier for you go approaching that shoulder line now slow down as it gets to the bottom there we go so that one's done so dovetail is cut out now let's just get rid of these extra bits on the corners so we get our crosscut saw for this and I've got my shoulder line drawn on there so just never your soil straight through and just be careful not to cut into the side of the dovetail obviously laughs there we go so there's our dovetail pretty much all cut out so we just got to clean up the shoulder lines now so nice sharp chisel in here and this why it's important that you square this lime round all the way because it means that we can locate that right in the bottom there and simply just push it through and again you don't want to be taking this in one chop because you're just going to end up sinking the chisel deeper than you want to so you just take out small amounts at a time and they go that's looking pretty good let's go clean out that last bit there that Shawn is all good now let's just flip it around looking good and once you've come in from the sides like that make sure that you double check these front edges here that you haven't dips below that line because I'll see that's going to be a show face there what you will see on this very front edge and around the entire perimeter so actually is a very very small white line and that's actually your initial knife line going all the way around and obviously the bit behind that is where your chiseled so as soon as you see that white line around the outside you know that you've gone down far enough and that you are spot on that knife line so don't go any deeper than that there we go dovetail all cut out now let's get it cut out into this so face side is up on here face side is up on here don't be tempted to cut into your face side because obviously that would mean your face size up on here and your face sides down in here keep track of them remember they went up this way in the shape that wasn't a heart so we want to be doing that so flip it over like this and we're going to trace around this with a knife what you can do at this point is get yourself a cramp so you're just going to lock it in place in my hands get one of these quick-release clamps so now I can just get the knife in there do a very light cut to start with and then I'll increase that pressure to start digging in there we go and again on this side just get that line established there we go take that off and we have our dovetail mark there and obviously this is the material the next thing we got to do is get our mark engagement we've got to establish how deep we want to go so again if you watch the previous video you'll know that we reference this marking gauge off of our face side here so because the dovetails on this side it's easy to think up a reference off that side no you want to reference it off your face side still so mark that all the way along there and obviously now you have your dovetail Marsh you can see roughly how far you need to go with this marking gauge so you don't end up putting massive lines in the edge of your timber okay so that's all done and we're just gonna square those lines down now so again referencing from our face side wears knife there we go so in fact I'll spin this round so you can see so still referencing off the face side here and get my knife into where that dovetail ended there you go slide the square up drag that okay square that line down and this one as well yeah back those lines are established now this one here yeah right again just I'm removing there we go so let's get cutting this thing out now so similar to the corner having joint I'm not going to cut directly to these lines because I like to chisel down to them and get that nice pristine mark on there so I'm going to get my cross cut carcass so for this if you're at any point confused about the source that I'm using in terms of the terminology and sizes and things like that I did a video on what source do you need so I'll put the link up here for that and that will give you a good overview of what source you need obviously and what the differences between them are and health find one that's going to suit your work the best I very much recommend watching that before seeing the rest of this series because it will give you a much better understand what's going on here so you might say I'm starting at the back edge here and then leveling muscle up and if you watch my video on how to saw and again knowing the things in that video it will give you a much better chance of being able to cut these accurately so I'm just approaching that baseline now so he's gonna take small cuts here and there just to make sure that I don't go below it right so those are two outer cuts done they're about a millimeter away from our knife line what I'm going to do now is just do a few more cuts in the middle just to weaken this material here so we can whack it out with the chisel okay now let's get the bulk of this material out so just get it in the vise like that don't need to be too precious for this just walk it out and get rid of most of it so that it's coming out now going this way into it we go it's the same as the tea holding joint we're just gonna sort of skim over that with a chisel and get rid of bulk and material so just pressure on top skim it through there we go that has hit most the high points so carry that on with a chisel just keep going down to those base lines you got there stick a ruler in there and then just find any peaks in the middle and then mark those with your jesus pen and then that will give you a nice flat bottom for you to glue to I'm going to show you the method with the router plane so over this side now okay so it's jobs like this that the router plane is Asli going to excel because it can reference off these two surfaces and skipping that through a shoulder plane you could still use for something like this but it's just going to be a little bit more difficult to see into that joint so router plane is really good here so I'm gonna bring the blade up so we're taking off the peeps to start with so through and we're just gonna keep lowering this blade until I eventually hit that base line that is pretty much at the baseline what he might do it's just that little trick where I just loosen this tighten it again and just let that blade naturally drop of it there we go taking out one final parcel right around there we go Eric and that's pretty spot-on on the bottom now so now all we've got to do is trim back to these lines that we've drawn on here to allow this to be properly mortise tin so we're gonna get our chisel for that or should have thrown it around like that practice because there's a middle of your left like I said previously what we're gonna do is remove half of that to start with and just see vertical whack it through so they do that all the way along take it back an equal distance so now it's all completely cleared out and now we started off point five millimeters away from the shoulder lines and then we did the final chopping all the way down with a chisel and now it's looking nice and uniform all the way along the edges looks like there's a small step there which I'm just gonna slightly pair out it is cool so that is all good now we've just got to clean out these corners so because this joint is very tight thing we do want to make sure we get it as perfect as possible first time so we're just gonna make sure none of these little niggly bits are in the corners here that they're going to prevent it from bottoming out check out that last remaining bit there we go so before whacking this together we're just going to do a few checks on it firstly check it with a ruler all the way along just to make sure that there's no points here where it's sort of dropping off like it did in the previous video we're going to make sure that that is all nice and crisp on there which it is all I've got on there is half the V point left by the marking knife but we can play now afterwards it's a very very small mark so that's all good and again on this one if this was prepared with as much precision as it was in the previous video this will be perfectly fine so to make this a little bit easier to fit in all I'm going to do is put a small chamfer on the underside here when you do this choke up on the chisel like this your hands there's a bit of meat there so we're just going to get the chisel on here and don't start right from this outside corner cuz you're gonna see it just start from here and then pair through so just a very small amount this will just help it locate into housing we have here so that's looking all good just gonna remove those last bits from in there there we go right back it in to get all fit he'll this workshop echoes well that ain't going anywhere that is in there pretty rock-solid so I don't even think that these glue let's just give it a plane so coming in from the outside in so we don't cause any breakout on this outside edge in this through really looking pretty good on there just got a little bit of a shoulder line left to get rid of right just do the ends now so get that all cramped up right like that beautiful right I think that is pretty much there and there we go that is how you cut a dovetail T having joint now obviously my videos are quite heavily edited so it'd be quite easy for me to just cut the camera glue it up and then not tell you but to prove that you can get a joint this well fitted without glue I will show you that now providing I can actually get it out no glue whatsoever so you saw the result left over from that that is what you can achieve with precision marking out precision using of tools precision use of tools and yeah just take your time with it and you will get a creaky fit like that and it will just be I mean imagine that with gluing it and clamps that is just gonna be amazing so there we go hope that helped and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 222,975

Keywords: hand cut joints, woodworking by hand, how to cut a lap joint, how to cut a halving joint by hand, woodwork, beginner woodwork joints, beginner woodworking, woodworking for beginners, woodworking joint practice, using a marking gauge, using a chisel, using a shoulder plane, using a router plane, cutting woodwork joints by hand, beginner handmade woodworking joints, hand woodworking, fine woodworking, how to cut a dovetail halving joint, dovetail, how to cut a dovetail, how to

Id: 9jgRfef4ZnE

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 03 2017