neverending story pt4 - drawers dovetails slips

[stoatyboy]

First up - sorry for dragging this out but boy this is nothing to how long it took to make them - I may once have had dreams of being a cabinetmaker - I now know I am way too slow to make any money

anyway so far I've ripped off a design, made some carcasses (carcassi?) and fiddled about with bits of oak when I should have been working. And to be honest it's cos I'm scared of making the drawers not having done it before and doing a design with four different sized drawers on two units so eight drawers to do - blimey the enormity of it is starting to kick in

so wood all cut to size and thicknessed time to get out my trusty dovetail kit

I may have mentioned this before but I love my little saw - it's not a 'pedder special' but it's mine and I love it so there

with some help from this forum I went from bashing out ripped up rotten tooth looking tails like this

to smooth as baby's bum pared bottoms like this - thanks guys

sharpen your chisel take it slow and don't use a mallet if you were wondering - so tails sorted onto the pins - marked out as per Cosman - well maybe not quite but 'in the style of' and sawn down with my saw - I then got out all the waste like this

Does this still count as hand cut? I reckon it does its free hand routing after all - looks like this when it's done

be carefull though as you can get this - minor breakout!!

luckily it was on a bit i was going to remove later so no harm done - but a bit rubbish all the same - clean up the edges with a chisel and your dovetails are done

no pics of the glue up - next bit is to make space for my oak inserts so a whizz across the TS200 on my crosscut sled - several times

clean with chisel

finish off with (excuse for a) router table I found if i went straight to router it got a bit heavy - it was less stressful this way as the router had less to do and so behaved better - probably a technique issue.

to leave space for the insert

which when glued in all look like this (needing cleaning up and stuff)

Yes he said a little too smugly I do believe they are bookmatched

so a pile of offcuts soon to be slips - great way to use offcuts

run them over the router (6mm straight bit) note I label my push sticks - stops me throwing them away - I wouldn't want to lose a piece of equipment of that quality after all

I think I might have pushed them through the wrong way? I really cant wrap my head around router climbing cuts and stuff it will click one day.

whiz them along the table saw to size and plane off a corner and you have set of slips

glue them on - six spring clamps per slip - and you get

ready for the bases to slide in (no pics of that i'm afraid) I then applied my 'drawer fettling kit' to make them a piston fit (yeah right) guess which bit i used the most - yes the belt sander - next time it'll be the record 5.5 promise

and I ended up with drawers that looked about like this - which I am pretty pleased with for a first attempt - ok they're not all that good - and I had been practising dovetails for a while before I did it - but even so i'm a little bit proud

so nearly there - all that's left is the fiddling about, tidying up, finishing, fixing the cock ups etc etc which is the next instalment

must say thanks to Steve M (and others) for his advice on the slips in an earlier post I really was a bit stuck - couldn't visualise them at all so cheers

sorry for all the photo's - i've left out loads!!

Pete

 

[Mr T]

Hi

Good looking dovetails Pete, as you say a few practice joints help.

Chris

 

[mtt.tr]

Wow your dovetails are great especially with pine fantastic. Also time come with practice so keep practising

 

[Titus A Duxass]

Nice work.
You did go the "other" way on the router table - hey it works that way as well.

Those that think they know better always state - push the work piece against the rotation not with.

 

[wobblycogs]

That's looking really good. The dovetails are lovely and tight for pine which is a pig to work with generally.

I would have said you went the wrong way on the router table since the rotation of the bit will tend to push the piece away from the fence. The wood whisperer did a video on workshop near misses / accidents he's had one of which was a climb cut incident. It's worth looking up because not only does it cover a lot of common mistakes the way he describes them is really funny.

 

[Pvt_Ryan]

That's looking really good. The dovetails are lovely and tight for pine which is a pig to work with generally.

I would have said you went the wrong way on the router table since the rotation of the bit will tend to push the piece away from the fence. The wood whisperer did a video on workshop near misses / accidents he's had one of which was a climb cut incident. It's worth looking up because not only does it cover a lot of common mistakes the way he describes them is really funny.

Linky?

 

[StevieB]

I may be missing something here, but if you are going to do the oak 'cover' pieces, why go to the hassle of doing blind dovetails? Why not cut the rebate for the slip first and then do through dovetails? Apart from that, very nice!

Edit - just looked again and realised they are through dovetails and you have a backer piece in the photo - ignore me!

Steve

 

[wobblycogs]

It was one of these two videos I forget which (It was a while ago)

http://thewoodwhisperer.com/episode-49-safety-week/

http://thewoodwhisperer.com/episode-52-my-mistake/

 

[stoatyboy]

Thanks for the comments appreciate it - I think I might have seen the WW video - is it the one where he makes 'router rockets'?

I obviously have to watch it again but I think it might have 'clicked' - I want run the router so that the bit tries to push the work into the fence? that way it stays nice and tight to the fence and can't go any further stopping it getting whipped out of my hands and pulling my hand with it across the bit - makes sense now thanks

cheers - Pete