Machining Matching Male & Female Dovetails

[Music] well hello and welcome back to the ten barn I'm pragmatically and today's video is going to deal with cutting dovetails again I've done several videos lately they involve dovetails but this one's going to be a little bit different if you're calling one of my previous videos not too long ago I said something about needing one of Randy Richards Randy Richards all dovetail cutters and shortly after that video I got in touch with the random we exchanged some emails and some communications back and forth and I got one of his brass scribes and I also got his large dovetail cutter let me grab the other one I was using right quick and show you what I had been dealing with this is one I've had for a long time and as you can see it's actually missing one of the flutes on there and not very sharp at all but I got this one and after again exchanging a few messages with Randy back and forth and they didn't know I had got it and he got a package from the Israel oh I got it had another package in the mail from Randy and didn't quite understand it I opened it up and it was one of his small dovetail cutters with the half inch shaft I sent him a message told him I sure appreciated it and he said well you might want to thank one of you viewers viewer Reid Eichner es eh NER had seen the last video that I did making dovetails cutting a dovetail and contacted Randy and said he wanted to to buy a cutter for me send it to me so Reid I greatly appreciate it it's going to go to use today the project I'm working on this one's a little bit big for it I'm gonna turn the camera around and show you what we're gonna work on today okay I suspect all of you have seen this method of measuring a dovetail when you want to duplicate one just as I was doing when I was making these boarding bar holders I wanted to duplicate the female side of the dovetail from this and again I think most of you have seen videos for use a set of pins like that and they all adjustable parallel in between to measure that distance and duplicate that on the other side well what I want to do in this project is to take two pieces of steel and put a male on one side and put the male into thin piece here and female into this piece now this is for another project another upcoming project but I don't want to confuse this project with what's coming up so today we're just going to talk about making the two parts of the dovetails I decided I would do a prototype just to see if my logic will come out right and what information I could glean so I took these two aluminum blocks here just to see how close of a dovetail how close I could come out in there and I was really pleased with that what I'm going to do on this again is the two steel blocks over here make the two parts of the dovetails and I'm going to see just how close I can get it just for practice sake as I did in this but then I'm going to come back and make a gill to go in and at that same time I will take the mail piece that we've cut and make it so it's not quite as tight anymore but that way the gibs can be tightened down one of the things that I in preparing for this one of the things that I learned was another relationship to the pins when we use a set of pins to duplicate a dovetail we usually put them on the inside and like I say user calipers or a I like to use an adjustable parallel weights that in there and then use the micrometer but we always measure on the inside of the two pins but here's another relationship we can look at let's say we started with a female piece and we just cut it to whatever size in my case I'm gonna make that center section just so that the smaller dovetail cutter will fit in there which would be that'll be a little over an inch by the inch and sixteen thousands on this short point here but if we put our set of pins in there and we let them hang out to the outside here you see if I can get this set up now instead of measuring inside the pins let's take a measurement right quick to the outside of those pins ensure everything seated down in there good and tight and that comes out to one point one one two of course that will be entirely dependent on what size pins you use you want a pin that will fit down in that dovetail good not right on the top edge but will will catch the bottom and decide fine so we've determined that now let's look at the the counter part of this the mill side of it that I did a little bit by trial and error let's take these same pins put them in there and again just just to help hold them here's a little tool makers clamp so we've got those in there now remember when we had two pins in here we measure to the outside of them now let's measure to the inside of that there is one point one one Oh within mm measuring the outside of the pins here and the inside of the pins there so we're going to use that relationship between the two in making and cutting our steel box I won't cut the female first in here and again I'm gonna cut it just the center just wide enough for this to go into and then we'll start working each side back and forth until we've got what looks like a good-looking dovetail we don't necessarily want these edges right here to come out to a point want just a little bit of flat in left so I won't get this block set up on the meal and we'll take up over there okay I'm in the mill now got the thick piece which again I'm going to use for the female side I've got it mounted in the mill vise I've kind of stopped over here so that all that will make Center it up the the other piece easier or if I have to take this out for whatever reason it'd be easy to repeat it but I've located the center on the x-axis I'm using a 7/16 in mill because I'm pretty sure that's about the sharpest one I've got we're gonna cut through this and I'm gonna go a depth of 300 thousands I've got the Dro zeroed out now or zeroed it out and I'm gonna start taking some passes across here [Applause] [Applause] all right here's our 300,000 [Applause] [Applause] now I'm going to start stepping over from side to side remember we want 1.01 six out of that center there to give clearance for the dovetail cutter so I'm just going to start stepping side to side [Applause] all right well them get a little measurement now all right I originally wrote down here that we needed to go point two eight nine on each side of zero and as measurement now says point two eight eight just what we got to each side of zero so we got a little ways left to go a couple more cuts [Applause] and remember if this is a little bit large it's not a big deal at all because we're making the male and the female piece and we're not necessarily making this to match the prototype we just use build the prototype to approve our end in head theory 1.0 101 for that needs let's see what it looks like yeah that are clear alright I won't get the dovetail cutter set up in there and I'll bring you right back I brought the camera around in front of the mill now so that you can see what we've got we've got three hundred thousandths deep trough cut through here 1.01 six or 1.01 five there abouts enough clearance for the dovetail cutter to come through there what I'm going to do just like I did cutting this slot through here is step over to each side from Center we've got the DRDO of the back on zeros now and not gonna step over any particular amount but I want to step over till I've got a good dovetail good-looking dovetail in there and I've left just a little bit of a shoulder up here to talk so I'm gonna make a couple passes trying to make a couple passes with the with the camera sitting here and then I'll move it back out of the way but for right now let's let's just step over about 50 thousandths I'm turning this dovetail cutter in the high range of my meal I have three options six hundred rpms 1120 at 1700 I'm going with 1120 I'm gonna see how that does and I've got it the damn said so that it just touches the bottom this is not gonna be much depth at all right here [Applause] now we'll sell 25 or 50,000 on the other side of 0 alright let's take a little more this time we'll rat 50 on the Dro well I tell you what let's just let's take another 15 goes to a hundred on the Dro and take a look at it [Applause] all right since it's so much easier for me to see what the cut is starting it this in I'm simply gonna come back and make another pass on this side stepping over and I'm just gonna advance 25,000 sis time see what it looks like [Applause] let's go by 30 [Applause] the flame playing on the other side of the road my case 130,000 [Applause] I'm gonna get this these deep bird now cleaned up a little bit and then we'll take some ten measurements on it all right I put the pins in this piece and got the adjustable parallel in there to hold the pins tight I've measured across here where do micrometers can come up with one point one one five and I'm just going to make that notation a Roman notepad I'm gonna see if I can get this in close enough that you can see maybe what that dovetail looks like I'm not sure it's going to focus but you can see I left a little bit of a shoulder right up here on these edges so what I've also done is come to this side over here and measured that long point over here now that is not an accurate way to try to cut a dovetail trust me you might get lucky but for the most part with the only true way to cut a dovetail is to use the pin method but to get this closely roughed out I've measured across here I come to one point two to five I subtracted that off of my diameter of this piece which is one point eight three seven come up six one two divided that in half for 306 off of each side so I won't take 306 off of this side and 306 off of this side and then we'll put the dovetail cutter back in and start making our male side so right now actually the dovetail is still in there but there's no need to put in any additional cutting pressure on the dovetail then we have to so we'll put the in nail back in and by the way I don't know if you could tell if you could see it that well or not see if I can get it a focus still Calcutta is putting out chips not just a mush like that old dough when I was using was doing this is actually putting out full chips on there I'm extremely pleased with Reed I think you again for it Randi you did an excellent job on that and we'll put it back to use again in just a moment and again I put me a couple just little sanity marks on there zero out there and we want three hundred thousand steps and what we want to do is step that over since I'm actually gonna be taking this out I don't care if I mark that up just a little bit but I'm gonna ease it into it where it just touches and then I'll zero out the DRO and we say we want to come in 306,000 all right I'm gonna do that same thing to the other side I don't bring you back all right I've got the shoulder cut on both sides now got it deep bird and ivory centered and zeroed out my dealer I've centered on this boss that we have up here now not to hold peace but on the boss should be the same center because we took 306 thousandths off of each side but just to be sure how 0i0 it out on the center here now just like cutting the female side of the dovetail we're gonna take some off of each side let's see I want to be sure I'm I'm conventional milling so I wanna set right here before I get into the depth don't off on the x-axis and get my Z set No now I'm going to just come in and touch off to what I think is a that good amount the cut will and that says 50,000 on the DRO [Applause] [Applause] now I'll go to the same dealer reading on the other side of zero [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] all right I think that's maybe deep enough now to get the pins in just want to be absolutely certain there's no chips in there I need to do it a little deeper in right here on this end I'll bring you back all right I've got the pins in there the dovetail is deep enough for the pins to go in and this measures there's really no no room right here to get the adjustable parallels in so I'm going except they hold that snug in there and tighten them down and that is one point one four seven we said we wanted one point one one five that's 30 mm left to go divide that by two that's 16 thousandths more on each side now obviously I've got the other piece of this right here with me and I can measure it but I wanted to show you this using the Pens part of it in case you needed to match up a male-female dovetail that you didn't have a sample to go by you had one or the other and the one that you had was not in the position where you could bring it over to the meal and test fit and those kind of things so all right we need to come in 15 more thousands on each side 16 more thousandths all right I should have that set now everything is counting down on on each side so I wanted to check some math on there let's give this a try of course keep in mind for it to fit it's got to be just a little bit smaller a couple thousand smaller it's the same size obviously it's not going in later all right one point one one five so it's probably not gonna quite go in there may have to file just a little bit or or maybe just run to clean up with the with the dovetail cutter but let's see look at there there you go there's a matching dovetails you [Music]

Channel: MrPragmaticLee

Views: 240,718

Rating: 4.8154883 out of 5

Keywords: PM-7727, PM727, Randy Richard, Randy Richards, dovetail cutter

Id: FO7VKm-aBqU

Length: 27min 5sec (1625 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 19 2018