Popular Woodworking 2003-10 № 136, страница 60
Through-dovetails are easier to cut than half-blinds.To make life easier (and to stretch your stock of valuable wood) cut through-dovetails when joining your sides and drawer fronts.Then add '/V'-thick veneer to the drawer front. the joint. When you join your two pieces, the too-tight pins will compress the tails and the joint will be seamless. If you try to compress too much, one of your boards will split as the two boards are knocked together. This compression works especially well with half-blind drawer joints where you are joining a secondary softwood for the sides (such as poplar) with a hardwood drawer front (such as oak), because the softwood compresses easily. But be careful: This trick doesn't work when you are trying to join two pieces of dense exotic wood, which doesn't compress much at all. — Christopher Schwarz Fake Half-blinds for Dovetail Joints Half-blind dovetails are trickier to cut than through-dovetails, but they don't have to be. I picked up this trick from dovetailing maestro Rob Cosman, who has two excellent videos on dovetails that are available from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks (lie-nielsen.com or 800-327-2520). Essentially, you first build a drawer with the easier through-dovetails and then glue a 1/4n-thick piece of veneer over the drawer front, making them look like half-blind dovetails. Usually with drawers you have 1/2"-thick sides and a 3/4"-thick front. To do what we're suggesting, make your drawer front with 1/2"-thick stock, too. Then join the sides to the front using through-dovetails. Then, using your band saw, resaw a piece of 1/4"-thick veneer from a piece of really nice figured wood. Make it a little larger than the finished size of your drawer front. Then glue that veneer to the drawer front, let the glue dry and trim it flush. This makes excellent half-blind dovetails and allows you to stretch your supply of nicely figured woods for your drawer fronts. — CS Deeper Mortises Close Gaps It's easy to get gaps when using a traditional mortise-and-tenon joint. Luckily, it's also straightforward to get rid of them. Use your workbench as part of your clamping setup when applying the veneer to the drawer.This setup helps spread pressure evenly across this large surface. If you make your mortises exactly as deep as your tenons are long, you're asking for trouble. By doing this, you haven't created a place for any excess glue to go, so it will be forced out of the Making your mortise a little deeper prevents gaps at the shoulders. joint. And if there is even a little bit of gunk at the bottom of your mortise, the joint won't close tightly no matter what you do. To fix this, make your mortises 1/l6" deeper than your tenons Tenon ^ Mortise is 1/i6" deeper than tenon is long Bottom of mortise 60 Popular Woodworking October 2003 |
