Leigh dovetail jig, festool or trend?

[custard]

what about the woodrat? you can do needle dovetails with that on the right boards, or at least fairly fine.

I use a Woodrat, actually it's a Router Boss but they're both pretty similar. I use it because it saves storing lots of separate jigs for chair making, the Woodrat and the Router Boss are basically very versatile and repeatable jigs for all sorts of compound angle work.

However, as a dovetailing tool I think it's got some shortcomings. To allow very fine dovetails, but still prevent the router bit snapping, they use a weird 1:9 slope. I thought that was so close to the traditional 1:8 that it wouldn't make any difference, but in reality it makes a lot of difference. Basically the 1:9 dovetails end up looking more like box joints than dovetails...and to add insult to injury the router bits still snap!

 

[MikeJhn]

Still seems as though the Leigh is the best out there, once you realise that the most important measurement is the thickness of the two boards you are dovetailing and that each dovetail bit only works at one depth, the set up becomes much easier, I generally find I can be cutting dovetails within fifteen minutes of getting the jig out, especially if cutting single pass blind dovetails which are the easiest to set up.

Mike

 

[marcros]

what about the woodrat? you can do needle dovetails with that on the right boards, or at least fairly fine.

I use a Woodrat, actually it's a Router Boss but they're both pretty similar. I use it because it saves storing lots of separate jigs for chair making, the Woodrat and the Router Boss are basically very versatile and repeatable jigs for all sorts of compound angle work.

However, as a dovetailing tool I think it's got some shortcomings. To allow very fine dovetails, but still prevent the router bit snapping, they use a weird 1:9 slope. I thought that was so close to the traditional 1:8 that it wouldn't make any difference, but in reality it makes a lot of difference. Basically the 1:9 dovetails end up looking more like box joints than dovetails...and to add insult to injury the router bits still snap!

custard, have you given up on trying to mechanise dovetails, and "just" cut them by hand still?

 

[custard]

By and large yes. If I’ve got loads of dovetails to cut I might use the bandsaw to cut the tail boards, but for custom furniture work it’s just quicker to do it by hand.

I’m conscious that a lot of newcomers to woodworking buy jigs because they’re frightened of cutting dovetails by hand. I think in the long run that’s a mistake. Some frequently used dovetails simply can’t be cut by jig, and hand cut dovetails look better than jig cut.

Jigs make sense for commercial kitchen work, but for the majority of the work that this forum is concerned with I don’t believe dovetail jigs offer all that much.

 

[MikeJhn]

I would love to cut dovetails by hand, but old age and Arthritis preclude using any hand tools for long periods, the last set of drawers I used my jig for took two days, it would take a month using hand tools at 1/2 hr a time, plus as I am not trying to make a living out of my work, jig cut dovetails are perfectly acceptable to me and possibly the majority of amateurs on this forum.

Mike