Laying Out Perfect Dovetails with a Few Affordable Tools

hello I'm Joshua Farnsworth welcome to my woodworking school here in Early's Ville Virginia in this video I'm going to show you how to lay out the tails of dovetails perfectly spaced out like this just using a handful of really inexpensive tools so let's get started [Music] all right so I'm going to show you how to lay out the tails of the dovetail board and like I said you don't need to have a lot of really expensive tools to do this with I'm going to share a few tools with you that you can buy for pretty reasonable prices and I'll show the links to these tools in a in the video below or in the description section below the video the first one is you need a six inch combination square or some kind of square this one is when we use in our school and I bought a bunch of these and they're only about I think under $10 and the next tool that I use is a pair of dividers and these dividers are very similar to some antique dividers I have they're not quite as good but they work perfectly fine and once you sharpen them up you can't beat it for like seven eight dollars or something like that so we use these in my school as well super inexpensive and then this is a really nice marking gauge it's similar to some other really expensive ones but this one is about 20-25 dollars and it's got two locking screws here so it gives you a nice tight lock on your marking gauge or it's got a little cutting wheel right here so you can see and then I use a sliding bevel square or sliding tea bevel that can be purchased either used vintage or I'll share a link to some good new ones that I've used and lastly I like to use a pencil for my layouts and I like to use the point five lead so let's get started laying out the tails of the board which then can be transferred on to the pin board so just one little word about dovetails is you really don't have to lay out your tails with tools like this I know some woodworkers who just lay it out and just start cutting but I kind of like the uniformity and especially on larger boards the larger the board the the more the tools are going to help you lay out perfectly spaced tails so let's get started so the first thing I always do is I always set the gauge to the thickness of the board plus just a hair over and this allows the pins when the dovetails are put together to protrude a little bit rather than being short so you would have to go back and play in the whole whole box or whatever you are building and then I will go and I'll run this cutting line all around all the sides of my board and I'm not going to do the back since this is just a demo so the next step is to just take your combination Square and measure about half the thickness of the board this is not a hard and fast rule and then I just come over here and set it there and I just make a little tick mark of there and on this side and that's just is going to tell me where the half pins go and then I'm going to put my pencil on that line slide the square up to it and scribe and I'm putting all my markings from this side I'm gonna do whatever here as well but I'm gonna flip this around just for you to be able to see what I'm doing a little bit better but normally I would measure them all from this from the front okay those are going to be the half pins of the tail board now what I want to do and this can be a little tricky but I'm going to simplify it for you so I've got to decide how many tails I want in here so I'm gonna say maybe I'll do just kind of for illustration I'm going to do five so I'm going to stick the tip of these dividers right in that line I created and I'm not gonna push down and I'm gonna step off and see if I get five one two three four five oh that's way way too much so I'm going to tighten it down now the more more tails you have on a board the more these adjustments will make a big difference because they'll multiply every time you take a step but five isn't too much I'm gonna try to get in one two three four five oh my goodness that's so close so I'm gonna open them up just a hair and see what it's gonna do one I'll see one two three four five okay it's just a little little far over so what I want to do now is however far past that line I go with that last step that's the little space I'm gonna have on all these little spaces between the tails so I kind of like I might do a hair more so let me an open this up just a hair when I have students do this usually it's a little easier for them to have a little bit wider pins one two three four five so that distance right there I think that's pretty good so now we're gonna start pushing them in so you don't push in their eye but I'm gonna push here you could see the tick marks one two three four and I'm not gonna I'm gonna darken these so you can see them put a little line on those and then I'm gonna come from the other side I'm not gonna come where that I'm not gonna go from where that was but I'm gonna put the dividers right on that line and I'm gonna come back from the other way one two three four there we go so now I'm gonna come from the back so you can see and I'm gonna stick my pencil right in each of those holes and I'm gonna draw I'm gonna draw a scribe line perfectly square line across now make sure you keep the blade of the square flat to the top and the fence of the school of the square flat to the back here and I'm just going to go and do this on each one of these is the bad thing about the this small thin pencil as it snaps off but it gives me a really nice fine line okay and I never I never do something like this with a square hanging off the edge because it doesn't give me enough stability so I'm gonna switch it over here and stick the pencil in the hole there we go now I'm also gonna darken this cutting gauge line that I did earlier so you can see a little bit better and now I'm going to draw the angles so what angle is the best for dovetails 7 degrees 8 degrees 10 degrees 14 degrees throw all that out the window I don't really like it when people give these absolute rules because I've seen a lot of antique furniture and some have really wide angle tales and some have really narrow and most of them are are holding together after all these years I would say don't do it so close to vertical because I'll give you a box joint and it can split the grain but just find a picture of a dovetail on the computer that you like the look of or on a piece of furniture like I just I just took this and set an angle from from the tool tray of this workbench because I like it the angle of that and it doesn't matter what the degree is just doesn't matter whether you're hardwood or softwood just do what looks good and it'll be fine so we're gonna start here make sure you put the pencil right on your line and then draw it down and I go past a little bit because when I'm sawing the dovetails it gives me gives them if I have a long line there it gives me a little bit of a guide for keeping my saw straight and I'm gonna do all the ones at this angle first going across and then flip it over and come back the other way and again keep this blade flat here and the bottom of the fence keep it flat against the top there and you may not be able to see all of these but I'm gonna do my best more careful you are layout the much better your dovetails will look see if I can there we go that's a better view and sometimes even if you don't usually need reading glasses for reading they might be helpful to pick up a cheap pair of the dollar store to help you make sure you can get these lines precise so then I mark my waist and that's where I cut so that is perfectly five dovetails laid out right on your board ready for cutting so if you liked this video please subscribe below and like the video and check out a lot of other free tutorials and buyers guides for tools at wood and shop comm this is Joshua Farnsworth if you're interested in learning traditional woodworking with hand tools visit my website at wood and shop comm where you can find free video tutorials workshop tours of amazing traditional woodworkers and tool buying guides you can ask questions and share your projects with thousands of woodworkers on my free traditional woodworking forum make sure you subscribe to my regular blog posts and also check out my ten steps for getting started in traditional woodworking enjoy

Channel: Wood and Shop

Views: 26,367

Rating: 4.9661732 out of 5

Keywords: woodwork, woodworking, traditional woodworking, roy underhill, woodwright's shop, chris schwarz, lie-nielsen, hand planes, hand saws, chisels, dovetails, joinery, hand tools

Id: DHvCBjvqI5o

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 04 2019