—without breaking this piece. All right and that is the natural magic of a dovetail joint is its naturally strong in that direction and that is why it is perfect for drawers. So, let us quickly talk about the different types of dovetails. You got through dovetails which are one of the most popular ones we are going to see and that is what I have here as an example.
Okay, the dovetail is visible from the front, from the side, it goes all the way through both pieces of wood. Then there is such a thing called a half blind dovetail. Half blind dovetails are very popular for drawers as well. They come in handy when you are doing an inset drawer because you cannot see the joinery from the front. It actually gets cut in to the side leaving a little bit of solid material at the front so you get the advantage of the dovetail but you do not see the joinery.
And, the third type is called the sliding dovetail. Okay now, a sliding dovetail is typically used in case work when you need to connect one piece vertically to another piece that is horizontal, and instead of using something like a dato, which is okay but certainly not as strong as a dovetail joint would be and you would not be able to pull those pieces apart. But it is a very good joinery for case work.
Now since we are doing machine cut through dovetails today, we should probably talk about the jigs. There are lots of jigs on the market and I cannot even pretend to have use them all. I started off with the Rockler jig years ago, the old version of the Rockler jig and graduated to this big guy here, the Ikeda which is a pretty pricey unit. Okay, we will turn it around for you. Major upgrade over the Rockler unit. The Rockler unit was okay but it was very frustrating to use and I did not find it very accurate and by the time I was done, I wanted to run it over with my car. But, upgraded to the Ikeda, which I consider it an overpriced unit but very repeatable, very quick setup, probably one of the quickest setup dovetail jigs on the market but you are very limited in your spacing. But it is not a pretty cool unit and I have had some luck with it.
Now here comes the big daddy. This is my pride and joy. Well, before I install it, let me show it to you, is the Leigh D4R and in fact this is relatively new to the Wood Whisperer shop. This is what I consider to be the industry standard or what all other dovetail jigs wish they were. It is a fantastic jig, the ultimate and adjustability with your finger spacing and you just cannot say enough good things about a jig like this. Anybody who has used one knows exactly what I am talking about. I do feel that it is well worth the investment and in fact, if you do not think it is worth the investment, Leigh has come out with a number of other jigs and they are super jig line. Put a little bit different in the concept but the quality is still there. It is definitely worth checking out. Hopefully, we will be able to do a review on that one day.
So, this one, I just pop into the holes, like so and I have got a nice sturdy work surface where I can actually cut my dovetails and move my dovetail station around the shop. It is really handy.
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So now it is time to set up our routers. We are actually going to look at our parts here and see what we got to work with. I got my wangy fronts and backs, actually the backs are maple, they are half inch material and then all my sign pieces here, all six my side pieces are also half inch material. Now, that is really important. The thickness of your material no matter what jig you are using is going to dictate certain setup positions or even bit sizes in the instruction manual here.
Okay, so you are going to live and die by this manual. And no matter how many times I use my jigs, no matter what brand they are, I am glued to this manual when I am cutting my dovetails because I do not want to make any mistakes. So, with the half inch material, Leigh has the recommended bit sizes and we are going to use two bits for this. And as the process that is involved in making through dovetails.
So I am going to quickly put on the 8 mm cored into the router, this is a 7-1/16 of an inch, guide bushing and that is a very common size. In fact, I have got two of them because I got one from another kit and that is what I am going to use on my second router.
Very simply, you just place it in here there is a little recess groove. This guy drops in. Okay and the little knurled knot if you will screws in for the other side. Okay, then you tightens it as good as you can. You really want to tighten that down as hard as you can with your fingers because this will vibrate a lot and you do not want that to loosen up while you are routing.
And one more thing before we actually make any cuts, a lot of times different manufacturers require you to do different little things to make sure that the boards for your drawers are facing in a particular direction so that they are milled properly.
In this particular case, I do not even remember exactly what face is out, what face is in for the individual cuts but I am going to prepare for that by marking the inside and the outside of each piece so that we can have them straightened out later. Now, if you got particular pieces that look exceptional, for instance, you want a particular orientation of your drawers one way or the other, the good thing is, the way this is going to work, it is not going to matter, and you could flip that back and forth. But, you will probably have a side that looks better than the other. On this case, these are almost identical in a lot of cases, one looks better than the other so you want to mark the inside and the outside. So it is very clearly which side is which.
And now Leigh recommends doing this, they want you to put a little box, like this and then you put an arrow indicating inside and outside. The other piece will have the arrow pointing to the outside and that is kind of crazy. Those are awfully similar from couple of feet away. They look the same to me. So, I do not even bother with that. I use a very tricky, almost, I do not know this is almost next level stuff, but if this is the inside, I am going to put a letter I and if this is the outside, wait, wait for it, the letter O.
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