Monday, February 08, 2016

Dovetail Square

Derek Cohen posted some photos of a small bench appliance on the SMC forum. It's for squaring up tail and pin boards for marking out the pins. I made one last night, in between doing my one day off from work this week "honey do's". It was a quick build and a good thing because shop time was very limited. That woman drives me like a rented mule of course sometime I act like a rented mule as well :-).

It has a simple pinned lap joint holding some scrap Cherry legs together. In use, raise the pin board just higher than the vise jaws with a thin piece of scrap. Use the same piece of scrap to hold the tail board at the correct height, square the tail board with the dovetail marking square and mark out your pins. A piece of cake or as my foreign clients would say "a sheet of cake".


This morning I made a quick and dirty set of dovetails to test the appliance out.  It is a winner, the base alignment was perfect. I could not feel the slightest difference between the boards. Now the question is....Why didn't I think of it first?

ken

5 comments:

  1. Interesting jig, never seen one like that before I dont think.
    I may give a try someday

    Bob

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  2. Bob,

    If I can get a couple of minutes to rub together sometime in the next week or two I'll post some photos of the jig in action. That is if I can find the time to put it into action and the time to photograph it. This semi-retirement is too long on the semi, I'm working more now than when I worked.

    ken

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  3. LOL I know how too well what you meant about working more into retirement(?) than before... Funny about that.

    I will keep an eye out for that upcoming post :-)

    Bob, the retiree

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  4. Hi Ken,
    interesting jig. Haven't seen that before. At least not that style.
    David Baron is building and using a dovetail alignment boards, but it's working different from this design.
    I will give it a try if I will find time.
    Cheers,
    Stefan

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  5. Stefan,

    I have a Baron type jig and it works OK. This dovetail square is easier to get "true" when building and works as well or better than the Baron type.

    In use I find it easier to get everything aligned because it is squaring both the end and the side where the Baron jig only aligns the side.

    ken

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