Zeddedhed":gyh7chdg said:
This is of particular interest to me as I've been considering the purchase of a decent jig specifically for Dovetails.
In an ideal world I'd practice 'til I'm 50 and get good at thrashing them out by hand.
In the real world (or my world anyway) I need to be able to small production runs of up to a maximum of 20 drawers maybe every three months or so.
I bought (as a test really) the Axminster Axcalibur jig which does work (sort of) but is hopelessly 'sloppy' and would never work for protracted periods of work. (By the way, if you want a detailed review of the jig which tells you everything you need to know, here it is - It's rubbish. Don't buy it.)
Obviously the 'daddy' of all dovetail jogs is the Leigh system, and it's currently top of my list.
Would either the Woodrat or the Router Boss be a better investment? - a question for Custard, Beau and PAC1.
One of the things that would concern me is that finding a free bit of wall on which to permanently mount one of the above tools will be difficult. If the tool is really a game changer then I'd find some space, but I like the portability of the Leigh Jig.
I normally cut dovetails by hand, but I've always kept a jig for those jobs where the price just won't allow it. First I had a Woodrat, then a Leigh, and now I've got a Router Boss. It might sound capricious but I bought them all second hand and sold the Woodrat and Leigh for the same amount I paid for them, so if you're prepared to be patient you can dip a low risk toe in the water.
It's important to emphasise that they all have strengths and weaknesses, I'm conscious these type of discussions often get dominated by out and out fanboys, who take any criticism of "their" tools personally. For what it's worth these have been my experiences,
-You need to use the Leigh jig regularly to build up operating speed. But once you do it's the fastest and most efficient of all the jigs I've used, especially for half lap dovetails. Let a few months pass without using it though and you'll be back at square one. Another problem is that it will live on a shelf, so you'll have to dig it out and set it up in order to use it, where as the Woodrat and Router Boss live on a wall and are ready to go at a moments notice. The Leigh will likely get used on your bench, so the longest component is little more than the height of your bench, the Woodrat/Router Boss are wall mounted so gain an extra 500-600mm in workpiece height which is often critical. Sure, you could build higher frames for all of them, but in reality you never will!
-The Leigh can produce dovetails that are pretty close to handcut, but the thickness of the drawer front is a critical dimension. You need to fit this dimension to available router bits so that the thinnest part of the cutter tail co-incides with the very edge of the board. Even a mill or two makes quite a difference here so you need to plan ahead and size your projects to work in "Leigh friendly" dimensions which tend to be thicker than I'd normally use. If you force fit available cutters to whatever thickness your drawer front happens to be then the result can quickly start to look very machine cut.
-The Woodrat and Router Boss can use all the Leigh cutters, plus they can use extra fine HSS dovetail cutters that are not quite "needle" or London pattern, but they're pretty damn close! The problem (besides snapped cutters) is they have a 1:9 slope so as not to stress the ultra fine neck of the cutter. You might think that 1:9 isn't too far from the traditional 1:8 , but I can spot them from the other side of the room and they're starting to get a bit close to looking like a box joint (actually many hand cut needle dovetails use 1:7 or even 1:6 to avoid exactly that box joint look).
-The earlier model of Woodrat that I used was pretty fiddly, and precision wasn't always what I wanted without a lot of time consuming shimming. I believe they've since beefed it up but there's still an issue in that users keep saying, "we want a milling machine for wood", where as the inventor keeps saying "it's not, and never will be, a milling machine for wood". He seems to delight in very low tech and ingenious solutions. In one way it's all pretty cool (he's actually a very cool ex architect), but it's also a bit too Heath Robinson for a production workshop.
-The Router Boss tried to tackle some of these shortcomings. The sliding carriage is substantially heavier and more accurate, the various tables are much beefier, dust extraction is better, and there are digital read outs which transform accuracy and repeatability. However, it hasn't been totally successful, the laser pointer for example is a complete waste of space and furthermore it's not cheap.
-Both the Woodrat and Router Boss are much more versatile than the Leigh. I can dispense with an awful lot of chairmaking jigs by using the Router Boss's tilting table. And if I want to leave my spindle moulder, router table, Festool MFT/3 Table, or hollow chisel morticer set up for another job I can easily substitute in most cases with the Router Boss.
-Finally, all jigs are only really useful for longer runs of
identical drawers. This is an issue for me as almost all my designs have graduated drawers. But if you're making kitchens for example there's probably more of an advantage to be had.
Good luck!
