Planing the sides of a through dovetailed box

[PaulO]

I have been practicing through dovetails by just making one joint, The final step being to plane up the sides after the joint has set. No problems with that.

I have now progressed to making four joints at once for a box. All seems to be gluing together nicely at the moment. When it has set I was wondering how to go about planing the sides, whilst avoiding tearout on the trailing edge, blowing out portions of the tails or pins. I could obviously put a bevel on the back edge, but I don't want the final product to have a bevel.

How do other members go about this?

 

[dchenard]

Plane in from the ends of the box towards the center.

DC-C

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

You could also try planing across the grain with a block plane ...

The raw dovetails ...

Planed across the grain ...

With a little shellac ...

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Wiley Horne]

Good advice. Couple of other thoughts....As you plane in from the ends, it is very useful to have good registration ahead of the blade.

A longer registration ahead of the blade keeps one from taking too deep a bite into the end grain there at the edge, with consequent (slight) rounding of the edges. With this in mind, you may find that a longer plane can be good--a No. 6 or 7 length, for example. Plus the momentum can help. I personally prefer a Japanese plane for this job, because of the longer registration it affords, but do not assume everyone has those around.

The other thing that will help is to skew the plane a bit as the blade engages the endgrain. Check the depth setting on scrap--if I hit the end grain with less than a very fine setting, things can get nasty. Final thing is sharp. Real sharp.

Hope this helps.

Wiley

 

[PaulO]

Thanks for the ideas. I've no problem with the end grain per se. My blade is very sharp and set very fine, using a tuned up No 5 L-N. No problem taking whisper thin 8" long end grain shavings. Just the risk of tearout.

I guess taking shavings from each side is the only real solution.

 

[David C]

Paul,

The large surface will have a planing direction.

One possibility is to come in, in that direction and stop the shaving very near the far end.
Then plane in, from that end, but very short, stopped shavings.

If the final piece has a slight bevel or round, to remove sharpness, (or arriss) then you may be able to go right through without spelch.
This requires great care and possibly reinforcing the mini bevel from time to time.......

David

 

[wdartsch]

What about clamping a piece of scrapwood flush to the trailing edge?
Then planning right along the whole length.
Just a thought
Wolfgang

 

[bugbear]

A longer registration ahead of the blade keeps one from taking too deep a bite into the end grain there at the edge, with consequent (slight) rounding of the edges. With this in mind, you may find that a longer plane can be good--a No. 6 or 7 length, for example.
Wiley

Or a Lee Valley Bench Plane:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx ... 1182,48944
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx ... 1182,48944

and the mouth is 4-3/8" back of the nose compared with 3-1/2" for the original. This extra length of sole in front of the blade makes it much easier to cut accurately because the extra-long nose makes it easier to maintain the sole flush to the material at the start of a cut.

BugBear