How To Cut Pins

 

The nice thing about hand cutting dovetails is that you can design them however you like. It doesn't require very precise measurements but it does require some precise cutting of the pins to get them to fit nicely to my already cut tails that I showed you in a previous post.

When I am ready to start laying out the pins on the vertical board in the picture above, I take my board with the previously cut tails and lay it across the top. I position it so the shoulder of the tails just kisses the edge of the board where the pins will be. I then take a sharp knife or a marking knife as seen above, and holding it flat against the tails, I trace their profile into the pin board below. No precise measurements needed at all.

I darkened the lines cut into the end of the pin board with a pencil so they are more easily seen and then used a square to transfer the lines down to the other horizontal line which is merely the thickness of the boards I am working with. Again, I don't know or need a precise measurement. I just set a marking guage to the thickness of the board and scratched a line across, later darkening it with a pencil for easier viewing. I then scribbled the pieces of the wood I need to remove so I don't accidentally remove the wrong pieces.

Using a saw, I cut straight down at the angle that I drew from the profile of my tails staying on the waste side of my line. Once I get all four of them cut down to the thickness of the boards, I need to remove the waste pieces between the pins.

Using my fret saw, I removed "most" of the waste. I was scared to go across my line, a no no and a sure way to make big gaps, so I stayed a long ways from my line as seen above. Later with practice, I would get a lot closer which made it much easier to work on the next step.

With the bulk of the waste removed by the fret saw, the next step was to remove the rest using a sharp chisel and mallet. The experts all say remove half of the waste left with your chisel on the first go around and then half again before setting your chisel on the scribed line marking the thickness of the mating board to get precise results. I found since I had left so much waste material behind, I had to pare it three or four times before I did the final chisel work on the line. The key to the final chisel work is only driving the chisel about halfway or less through the board and not try to go all the way. Above I tapped my chisel about a third of the way through the board on this side and then flipped it over to repeat the same process on the other side. This prevents the end of your board from splintering.

I also lean my chisel ever so slightly so that the point where my chisel cuts meet from both sides is actually in the middle and creates a slight divot. This part isn't visible and allows the outside edge that will be highly visible are tightly seated together when I put the dovetail sides together.

Above is my first completed hand cut dovetail joint ever! Note the crack in the wood extending from the center pin into the board. This is because I had to use a mallet to tap the joint together. A little tapping is desirable for a nice tight joint. Too much tapping because things didn't quite line up isn't and could split the board. Lesson learned. After taking this picture, I took it apart, shaved a little bit of wood here and there and it fit much better and with just a little tapping. I proceeded onto the other three corners of the main box and got all them to fit without anymore splitting of my material. The split above, with the pared down pins is nearly invisible with no more pressure on it and since it really don't be a structural part of my design, it should be plenty strong enough after the glue up that I don't have to redo that piece.