
Bandsaw Jigs Session 1: Bandsaw Dovetails
George VondriskaDescription
I love doing dovetails on the bandsaw because it allows me to do through dovetails with any spacing that I want to create. So there's a lot of room for creativity here. If you don't own a dovetail jig, or even if you do but the template, the comb on that jig is fixed. The bandsaw can provide a really good way for you to do dovetails as well. So, first thing we're going to do is go through how to use the jig.
Then after this, we'll look at how to build the jig. So here's the way this is going to work. My material is prepped and what'll happen with our material through dovetail means that each piece is going to go completely through the other one. We'll have pins and sockets and one board tales. and the other board.
First step is when I make my cut. When I enter into the end grain of this material I need to know when to stop and when to stop is dictated by the thickness of our mating board. A very easy way to make this happen is to simply align the face of the mating board with the end grain of the board that you're about to cut into. So what I'm feeling here is the registration between that outside face and the endgrain and what I'm actually allowing to happen here is that the end grain here is a little bit past the face grain. And I'll talk more about that once we have our dovetail done and I can show you why I'm doing that.
When I've got that set up hold the boards in place and strike a line. And that line now indicates the thickness of my mating piece. Let's talk about the strike and align thing for a second. I'm doing this all with a pencil and that's going to make it easier for you to see. The pencil is really really sharp, so that I get a distinct line to follow.
If the pencil is real soft and real fat, that's going to be like trying to follow a crayon line across here. It'll be really hard to be accurate. In your own word-working you might want to do this with a marking knife instead of with a pencil. But if I do that, you're not going to be able to see what I'm doing because those lines are so fine. And of course, from a marking knife we don't get a dark line like this.
We just get a scribe across there. So I'm going to do this with a nice sharp number two pencil. First step get that line that indicates thickness of mating piece. Now this is the cool part. We can lay this out however we want an adjustable square is very handy for this to give you some uniformity to your joint layout.
What I'm going to do is set this and it's about five eights of an inch but the number isn't really critical with the head of the square against one edge, I'm going to lay that out head of the square against this edge. Same thing. What I'm looking to do here is simply get a uniform distance from each edge in. What we're doing is we're laying out the sockets of our joint. So what that means is that out here from line to edge and same thing on the other edge line to edge this is a half pen on the outside of the joint.
Now, we'll get a new setting here and what using the adjustable square does for me is it'll make my joint symmetrical. It'll give me a uniform layout. So a second verse, same as the first And what'll happen here is this will become waste wood. That's a socket. This will become a waste wood.
That's a socket. Now I'm going to use my square and come in this way. And I'm drawing a line perpendicular to the end grain at each of my layout points. Waste wood, waste wood. I'm going to mark it here on the end too just so we can keep track of that.
Now this is the part of our joint where we need our bandsaw dovetail jig. So let's talk about slope and all of this stuff related to dovetails for just a second. Well, a lot of times when woodworkers talk about hand cut dovetails, they talk about the slope of the dovetail. And what that means is the angle on the tail and a real common couple of slope numbers are one in six or one in eight, and rather than express them as a degree they often express them as a slope like that. So here's what that means.
When we talk about a slope of one and six if I drew a line six inches long and one inch up and connected the dots, that angle would be my one and six dovetail slope, one and eight similar eight inches long, one inch up connect the dots. That angle is a one and eight dovetail slope. Now, the reason we need to know about this is it affects the way we make our jig. The way this works is that one in six is commonly used for softwoods, one and eight is commonly used for hardwoods. Now, lazy woodworker that I am when I built my jig which also has to have a slope in it.
I split the difference. So this jig is built to one and seven. And when we get to the jig building component of our class we'll talk more about that angle making that piece and getting your jig produced. So here's the way this works. When we cut our pins and sockets.
This is when we use the jig because we need to angle our board. Now on the bandsaw, possibly we could set our bandsaw table to the angle that we're trying to get here but on a lot of bandsaws, the angle will tilt down to the right, but it won't tilt down to the left. And I need to be able to get this board angled in both directions. So instead of angling the table we can angle only the board by using our dovetail jig. When I make this cut what you'll see me do is very carefully follow on the inside of my pencil line on the waist side of my pencil line, cutting.
So that as I come in I'm going to stop right at that baseline. When I do my cuts, got to keep track of our angle. I'm currently angled down to the left. I'm going to cut the line on the left of this socket and the line on the left of this socket. Then we're going to turn the jig, angle down to the right cut the line on the right of that socket and on the right side of that socket.
So you need to keep track to make sure you don't cut the wrong line when you're angled in each direction. Now let's get in on this blade and talk about that for just a second. For these cuts, I'm using a three-sixteenths 10 tooth per inch blade. Here's what we need. When we make our dovetail from the cut we get off of this blade.
I want to be able to go right to assembling the joint. So as a result, we need a pretty smooth cut. That's why I'm using 10 teeth per inch. Now this is a pretty narrow blade, three-sixteenths of an inch. And the reason for that is that you'll see for some of our cuts, we have to come in turn and finish in order to get the waste wood out.
So if I have too wide a blade, it's going to prevent me from being able to make a good, smooth turn there. So by doing these bands on dovetails for awhile, I found that three-sixteenths is a good compromise on my width. Ten teeth per inch is going to give me good surface quality. So I don't have to do any cleanup on the joint before I put it together. So again, the way this is going to work is we're going to get on our dovetail ramp, cut on the right side, flip, cut on the left side, stopping at the baseline.
Then we'll look at the next step that we need to do in order to get the rest of the waste wood out of there. When you make this cut. Take your time. It's going to take some practice to get this just right because we're trying to very carefully follow a straight line for our joint. One of the things I like to do is let the heels of my hands just rest on the bandsaw table and feed this with only my fingers.
It gives me a little bit more control rather than holding up here and moving more of my upper body in order to make the cut. So if you anchor your hands and let your fingers do the walking and give you a little bit better control. If you find that you're not directly on the line what's really important about this cut is that the cut that we make is perpendicular to the end. If the socket ends up just a little bit too big or a little bit too small, that's not going to bother me. But if that line is crooked, that's going to be a problem.
Now, next step, we've got to get this waste out of here and the way we'll do this is cut in, turn, follow this line the baseline of the joint to here. Now, what you'll see happen when I get to that corner is that the waste what's not going to pop out because the blade is straight up and down but our cut is at an angle. As a result the blade can't finish that inside corner. So you'll see me rotate the board lift the outfeed side of the board. Just a little to allow the blade to finish.
We have to do it in both directions in order to get to both inside corners. Now just a little side note about the bandsaw here, when I'm making this motion with my leg, there's a break on the bandsaw. So I'm stepping on a little brake pedal down here, shut it off, step on the brake. It helps it come to a stop faster. You might sometimes see me not hit the stop button cause there's also one incorporated with the brake.
So as soon as I step on the brake, it actually shuts off power and applies a brake to the wheel. So it brings it to a stop very quickly. When I'm making these cuts. I'm really, I'm trying to get in my Zen place here with, with dovetails. And it's the same thing.
When I hand cut dovetails. I find I really need to focus on what I'm doing. I really need to concentrate in order to follow those lines. Nice and straight. The cuts that we just made, across the baseline.
I think those are the hardest part of the joint because when we put this together we're asking the nice flat face of the mating piece to marry right up against that edge that we just cut. So if this line is kerflooey that's where it's going to show up. Now, let's think about this for a second. If you're not comfortable making this cut with a bandsaw, an alternative would be you could finish this with a hand chisel and chop that out. So you could still do the dovetail ramp for the cuts in, from the end grain but you could finish this with a hand chisel instead and that's a technique we would use in a hand cut dovetail.
So there's a lot of approaches that you could take here. Next step, we got to get tails that are a perfect fit to these pins and sockets. Here's the easiest way to make that happen. Grab your tailboard. First step I'm going to do the same thing I did before.
I'm going to position face grain, slightly inside end grain. Draw a line with a nice sharp pencil. Now, we put our pins and sockets on there and all we have to do is trace the pins and by tracing the pins onto this board as long as we can cut accurately, the joint has to fit. So this is where even if you want a little bit kerflooey on your cuts on the first part of the cut, we can compensate. We can make up for that here.
Cause we're tracing those cuts. Nice sharp pencil tracing in the inside of our sockets. I got to go back and look. I feel like I, Nope. I thought I might've missed that second one.
Now, when we look at this waste wood, waste wood, waste wood. Now how do we make this cut? When I was learning to cut hand cut dovetails. I was told try to take away half the pencil line with your hand saw. So when I first read that, I was like, yeah, whatever.
How can you take away half of the pencil line? It's crazy business. However, an execution I found using a nice sharp pencil. That is a pretty good way to get good fitting dovetails. So I'm going to try to do the same thing here.
I'm going to try to just skin along that pencil line take away about half the line on the outside here. It's going to be easy peasy. Cut in, cut in, on the inside waste. We're going to have to come in, turn the corner to get the baseline cleaned up. Just like similar to what we did on the pins and sockets.
And then we've got another easy one on the outside here. We're done with the jig at this point. Now all we need is the bandsaw and a bandsaw blade. So again, trying to take away about half the pencil line try to be as accurate as you can because this is really where the rubber meets the road on this joint. This is where you're going to get a good fit or not.
Depending on the quality of cut you make here. Remember that tip about anchoring your hands so that your fingers can do the control here for you. Watch the line, concentrate on your cut and you can make this happen. Let's see what we've got. Now.
There's only one way this will go together. It's kind of like a hand cut dovetail. Cause we're making these tails to specifically fit those pins and sockets. So because we traced like this with this face up we have to assemble with that face up. Okay.
Now let's talk about when I allowed the face of this piece to be slightly in the end grain of the other piece. This is why, this is what I want, after this joint is glued together. We've left this end grain just a little bit proud of this face grain. All we have to do after the glue is dry. You can use a block plane or a sander.
Then you can clean this up. You can take that down to where the end grain is perfectly flush. So your best bet is to leave them stand proud just a little bit till after the joint is assembled and take care of that later. Big thing with this is it's. It's the joke about how do I get to Carnegie hall?
And the answer is practice, practice, practice. Same thing here. You got to practice making this joint because we do have to so carefully follow those lines in order to get it to fit but it is a great way to do through dovetails. Now there's no such thing as a free lunch. Once the what's the negative to this, the negative is kind of the hand work we have to do in order to get everything to work.
The other negative is that for half of our cuts the board has to be between the blade and the, and the riser of the bandsaw over here. So there's a length limitation. The boards can't be any longer than the distance from the blade to the body of the band saw so that we can make these cuts. Material selection. This is I'm currently working with Yellow Poplar for these joints.
Poplar is a great wood to practice on. I'd recommend this over pine. It cuts nicer. I think you really want to practice this joint in a harder wood, not a softer wood to get a better feel for how it's going to work in your project. So now that we know how the jig works let's have a look at building a dovetail ramp for your shop.
So you can get started making this cool joint on your bandsaw. Let's build a dovetail jig for your band saw. Here's what we've got going. I'm using half inch Baltic Birch. You don't have to use Multiply.
You don't have to use Baltic Birch. I do like it for this cause it's nice and flat. Nice and stable. No internal voids. Half-inch material works well, but it's not imperative.
You could go up to three quarter. We've got two pieces here for the upper and lower decks. They're six inches wide, eight inches long. You find those dimensions on the PDF that comes along with the class. We've got a lower shoulder that our material is going to rest against half by half, six inches long.
Then the critical part, from this piece we're going to cut our two wedges. Now, remember I said earlier lazy woodworker that I am, rather than make one dovetail slope at one in six and another one at one and eight. I'm going to make this at one in seven and I'm going to split the difference between the two recommended slopes. So here's the way to do this. Just layout on here, the slope that you want.
One and seven. What that means is from the edge I'm going to measure up an inch. Then I'm going to measure over seven inches. Then same thing on this end, I'm going to measure up an inch from the opposite edge. On the first one I measured from this edge.
Second time I measured from this edge, come over seven and then with the straight edge connect the dots And this is our wedge and this is our wedge this stuff in the middle, his waist. Easiest way to produce these pieces. Cut them on the bandsaw. So I, so I'm going to run over to the bandsaw cut outside the line, give those bandsaw cuts a little bit of sanding to clean them up. Then we'll come back and put our jig together.
Be right back. We're ready to assemble. I've got my wedges. They're going to go just like that. And then our top deck is just going to sit on top of those.
So one of the things to watch out for is just make sure you have your wedges going the same way so I can show you here. The angle of course will be the same but it's a small detail. See, on the end of these, they don't currently line up but if I flip them over, they do so put them side by each like that and just make sure that they're oriented the same way, little bit of glue. I'm going to use a 23 gauge Penner to tack everything together. Assembly is pretty darn simple.
We get the end of that taper flush with the end of the base piece. And all the brads are doing is holding it until the glue dries. So you don't have to pepper it full of breads. One or two will be plenty. Now, this goes on flush with the end of our wedge.
Last step, a little cleat down here at the bottom. So overall, this jig is a pretty darn simple one big thing. Get that dovetail slope, right. If you want to make more than one, make more than one then I would be sure that you label them so that when you go to use them, you know which is which that's all it's involved in building our dove tail jig ramp for the bandsaw.
Share tips, start a discussion or ask other students a question. If you have a question for the instructor, please click here.
Already a member? Sign in
No Responses to “Bandsaw Jigs Session 1: Bandsaw Dovetails”