Paring Dovetail Joints with a Block Plane

On a dovetail joint like I've got here, a great way to do this is to allow the end grain of each component of the joint, pins and sockets on one board, tails on the other board, project past the face of the mating piece and then pare those off later to make it look like you made them perfectly flush right from the start. That's what I've got going here. This walnut end grain is the tail, it's projecting past the maple face here. So, what we wanna look at is a great way to pare those down. I'm a big user of belt sanders, random orbit sanders, this is not a great application for that.

Part of the problem with hitting this with a sander can be that you start rounding the outside corner inadvertently. You don't know it, but you start to do a little bit of tipping and pretty soon, instead of a crisp outside corner here, things get kind of deluded. Instead, we're gonna do this with a hand plane. Specifically, we're doing it with a block plane. One of the benefits that this brings to us is that the plane iron in here is at a low angle, 12 degrees and that does a great job of working on the end grain here.

Before I start with a hand plane, what I do wanna do is get some of this excess glue off. So I'm gonna do that just with a nice, sharp chisel. Now, a couple things with the plane. I've got it set for a very, very light pass. I'm gonna work from the outside in, never from the inside out because if we go from the inside out, when the plane hits this face grain out here, it's probably gonna chip it off and you're undoing the good work that you're trying to do here.

In addition to working outside in, I'm gonna skew the plane across the end grain just a little bit instead of taking a dead straight approach. That's gonna make it easier for you to make the cut and it's gonna help give us a little bit better cut. Very nice, it's a great way in just a short amount of time to bring that down. Now I'll sand the whole surface over the top, clean up any ickies I left behind with the block plane. The other thing that's nice about this, normally I've got a radio on in the shop.

When I'm running my power tools, can't hear the radio anymore. Working with hand tools like I am here I can still have the music going, I'm making shavings instead of dust, very pleasant operation. So, next time you've got end grain proud of face grain and you need to pare it down, give it a shot making that happen with a low angle block plane like this one. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how well that works.