Joinery Class Ep 5: Tapered Sliding Dovetail

hi everyone and welcome to another episode of joinery class in this class we'll be doing the tapered sliding dovetail with no shoulders this is a very strong joint and fits extremely tight it's really good for making a board and batten construction for doors or for doing a breadboard type of thing with cutting boards by having it on the bottom it prevents the cupping of the board similar to how a breadboard end would do here's how you can cut that joint the first thing i need to do is make a guide block that will guide my saw while i'm cutting the spot for the dovetail i'll put it in my vise and then set my protractor at 8 degrees and mark a line then i'll use my hand plane to get down to that line this can also be done on the table saw now that i've made the guide block i'll mark where the dovetail is going to go for the serving plate i'm making i want the legs two inches from each edge and i'll bring that line across with my square i'll take my protractor which is still set at eight degrees and mark out the dovetail end then i'll use my marking gauge to determine how deep i want to make the dovetail and then using my leg piece i'll mark the edge of the dovetail just a little bit narrower than the piece then i'll change my protractor to eight degrees on the other side and mark the other line you can also use a bevel gauge for this what i want to do now is bring this line across but move it over by 1 16 of an inch to make a taper so i'll use my square and see where this line would match up and make a little mark and then i'll make a line 1 16 of an inch on the inside of that and i'll draw from this line to the other side now i'll have a tapered sliding dovetail i'll do the same thing on the other side and then the same thing here bring the line across move it over by 1 16 of an inch then connect those two lines now that i have my markings made i'll clamp the guide block against the line so i can cut that 8 degree angle with my saw i'll offset it a little bit to account for the thickness of the saw blade make sure that the tops of the clamps aren't in the way of the saw the block is tilting a little bit so i need to adjust my clamps i'll place my catawba saw against the guide block and press it with two fingers to keep it in place looks like i'm down to my line on that side but not this side so okay i'm all the way down to my line so now i'll flip the guide block around and do the other side same thing on this side i'll place it right up against that line and make sure to leave a little bit of room for the saw kerf make sure not to block the saw blade with the clamp it helps to start on one corner instead of sawing all the way across [Music] i'll check the edge to make sure i'm not going past my line okay i'm all the way to the line so i can remove the guide block i have two pretty nice lines i can see that it matches up with the lines that i've drawn so i estimated the saw kerf correctly now i'll chisel out the majority of this waste staying well above this line that i've made i don't want to chisel to the end because i risk blowing out the grain below my line i'll come in from the other side now i can use my router plane and set it above the final cut to flatten the bottom of this a bit some of this needs a little bit more fine tuning with the chisel similar to the chisel i'm not going to go all the way to the end here because i can blow out the grain i'll come in from this side now that the bottom is really flat i'll lower it to my final position using my cut line as a guide i'll use a wide chisel on the inside corners just to make sure that these fibers are cut all the way down to my line then i'll do my final depth cut with the router plane and once again i don't want to go all the way through i'll come in from the other side and i can angle the blade of this to get down inside that dovetail now i need to cut a leg piece bevel the sides at eight degrees and then taper it so it fits exactly inside this dovetail i want this piece to be longer than my board is wide so there's a little bit of play as i drive it in so i'll take that same guide block which is at eight degrees and the piece that i'm using for the leg and i'll put them in my vise making sure that this piece is just slightly above that end of the guide block on both sides clamp it into my vise make sure that there's no gap at the top because that means it could be pinching them like this and changing the angle then i'll rest the right side of my plane on the guide block and start cutting just on this corner it's only cutting this corner right now because of the angle and eventually it'll cut this whole part and it'll be parallel with the guide block notice that i'm not cutting the guide block at all yet that's important sometimes you might cut it a little bit so be careful not to cut the guide block now it looks like it's all the way beveled i'll use my ruler to see if they're flush with each other almost there okay so that should be at eight degrees exactly now i'll do the other side now that i have the bevels cut i need to taper it so that it fits inside this perfectly i'll make sure to go in from the wide area so i'll make a little arrow right there and then choose a side on this that's going to go in because i'll taper that side to taper it i'll place my hand plane in the vise upside down and then the side that goes in is going to be the smaller side so i'll taper that i'll start by cutting only the end of it and then move down and that'll create the taper [Music] watch your fingers when you're doing this make sure to keep them rested on the piece and above the blade so that you don't end up taking your fingernails off and i'll test that to see if it fits because it doesn't fit in at the widest part i'm going to plane down the whole thing and then establish the taper later since the narrow end almost fits i'll start establishing that taper the bevel is a good fit but i can see that the taper is hitting on this front corner so i know that i need it more tapered than it is so i'll continue tapering this piece so that goes in a little bit farther but i can see that it's touching here and it's not touching here so i need to taper this even more so it's going in farther but same problem it needs to be a lot more tapered so i'm going to work just this end see if that helps i see that there's a small gap right there but there's no gap here so i know we need to work down this part a little bit more foreign now that the sliding dovetail is tapered and it fits really well i'm going to wax all the contact points so it can get in there even tighter and then hit it with the hammer okay that's about as tight as it'll get and now i can saw off the extra using my hand saw that's about as good as i can hope for with this dovetail make sure not to glue it in place because that will prevent expansion and contracting of this piece you really want it to allow wood movement this joint is really interesting and it's very strong with a little bit of practice you can get extremely tight fitting sliding dovetail joints this way and i plan to use it in a lot of my cutting boards to prevent them from bowing similar to how a breadboard end would do hopefully this helps some of you out with your joinery thank you so much for watching and please like and subscribe bye

Channel: Bob's Wood Stuff

Views: 1,318

Rating: 4.9259257 out of 5

Keywords: bobswoodstuff, bobs wood stuff, woodworking, diy, tools, how to, how-to, maker, making, tapered sliding dovetail, sliding dovetail joint, hand cut sliding dovetail, joinery, woodworking joinery, hand tool woodworking, hand tool joinery, board and batten, japanese joinery, how to cut a sliding dovetail, how to make a sliding dovetail, woodwork, wood, cutting board, dovetail joint, sliding dovetail, tapered dovetail, hand tools, sliding dovetails, hand planes, dovetail

Id: JI9_Xizszco

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 16 2020