Woodrat Techniques

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Never seen a woodrat but was surprised to see that it (appears to be?) neccesary to 'draw' the dovetail on a piece of the machine to cut the joint.
Strikes me as both strange and inaccurate.
But what do I know?, as I stated at the top, I have never even seen a rat.

Possibly the ratters could explain the need for the drawing???

Cheers and confused

Tony
 
Please please please don't encourage them. The whole "woodworker's cat" topic has got them quivering in their boots. They're not stupid you know. An innocent looking 'Rat question isn't going to draw them out of the workshop into open view. :wink: :roll:
 
Aragorn

rat02.jpg


I hold you totally responsible for this. :roll:

TheRatCatcher
 
Tony":28cclqzu said:
Never seen a woodrat but was surprised to see that it (appears to be?) neccesary to 'draw' the dovetail on a piece of the machine to cut the joint.
Strikes me as both strange and inaccurate.
But what do I know?, as I stated at the top, I have never even seen a rat.

Possibly the ratters could explain the need for the drawing???

Cheers and confused

Tony

Go on then I'll answer (as always :roll: ) . Tony, you are correct - you do use pencil marks to define a "working line". It might look inaccurate, buts it's very very precise. You can easily make perfect dovetails. Two things contribute in getting the absolutly perfect joints - first the pencil should be sharp - and second the stick you use to make the mark against should be quite thin - otherwise you can't get the pencil in to scripe it. The advantage of such a technique is you can use all sorts of wierd and wacky pin spacings, can do dovetails with any angle of cutter (e.g. 1 in 7, 1 in 8 etc - so you are not tied to any particular manufacturer), it allows you to do very thick (or thin) pins/dovetails - (as opposed to spacing). I don't think it's really possible to get a good understanding from only the pictures/descriptions - but if you are interested in knowing more - whatever you do, don't watch Godfrey (woodrat inventor) demonstrating at any shows - you'll come away more confused than before you started. (he's the worst demonstrator I've ever seen!). Try and find someone local who owns one!

In conclusion, it does still allow absolutlly precise dovetails to be created, but at the same time makes it a lot more versatile in terms of router bits.

Adam
 
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