How To Layout Dovetails With Dividers

I'm leaning over my camera so hopefully I don't screw this up I'm just gonna try and show you the best I can this line on either side over here represents a half pin I'm cutting these joints tails first so I need to mark out the tails on the end of my tail board half pin half pin and I used my dividers which is nothing more than just a drafting compass that I removed the lead and added another nail in but I use these to set an equal spacing on both sides made a little point struck with a nice little line and that's my half pin now I want to mark out the tails on the inside and I want them to be symmetrical so I am using this set of dividers now the distance from one point to the other point on these dividers equals one full tail plus one full pin so I want three tails so let's gently without leaving any indentations in the wood let's walk this off one two and three and when I want to end up over here is I want to be off into space over here and I want to have the distance from where I end up to this point to be about twice the distance of this edge to this point because this is a half pin and I want a full pin so as you can see I'm not quite here yet so I will increase the distance not by much because it's going to be multiplied by three for the three tails so one two and three I'm not quite there yet so I'll increase a little bit more and once you have this set you can mark all of your joints really fast so right there I'm about twice the distance to this point as this edge is to this point so that's going to be a full pin this is a half pin now what I can do is actually make marks so one tail and pin two tails and pins and that's it from this side so I'm going to start over here and go the opposite direction one tail and pin and one tail and pin so that gave me four points in the middle I could put my pencil into the point and strike some lines now I have evenly-spaced tails one two and three and evenly sized pins full pin full pin half of that distance equals 1/2 pin and a half pin everything is nice and symmetrical and now that I have this set and I can go ahead and mark all of my other joints as well you

Channel: Jay Bates

Views: 40,859

Rating: 4.9045224 out of 5

Keywords: jayscustomcreations, jay bates, easy woodworking project, woodworking, woodshop, woodworking projects, make, build, dovetails, hand cut dovetails, dovetail layout, dovetail dividers

Id: YkbSB3Ks_fw

Length: 2min 50sec (170 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 06 2016