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Well that took longer than expected…

So the last time I worked on the desk wasn’t as far back as October, but I didn’t get a chance to write it up (work has been a tad busy and other stuff has also been eating time). But with xmas dinner done, holidays finally kicked in for me and after collapsing for a few fallow days, I got back out to the shed in the last day or so. And managed to avoid breaking my neck on the decking outside the shed as well (some anti-moss napalm has been deployed and I’ll have to repaint that decking with some sort of high-traction paint before any really cold weather hits I think, and possibly drill a few sneaky drainage holes against standing water).

So in previous days, I got the dovetail mortice cut on the sides, using my normal technique for a stopped dado joint, which is to chop a small mortice at the point where the dado stops (so the saw has somewhere to go, though I wonder if a stair saw would solve that).… Read the rest

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Sliding dovetail postmortem

So looking at the pieces of scrap I was practicing on yesterday, I see that the power-cut dovetail has a consistent angle but the edges are anything but sharp and there’s a problem with blowout:

While the hand-cut version is messier but holding:

A bit more practice would clean that up. It’s slower, but it leaves you with all your fingers, which is a plus. The back end broke out because of short grain:

But you can see that the gaps aren’t as bad at the back end due to the angle being inconsistent. There are a few different hand methods to cut the joint – I was paring the angles with a chisel but there are more accurate methods. I guess I’m doing some more practice for a while and the doing this by hand.… Read the rest

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Still have ten…

So after weeks of not getting to the shed at all because of work and feeling pretty guilty for that, I finally got out there for a few hours today. The next step in the project is the sliding dovetails – the main desk surface shelf has been cut to the right angle, the sides are both shaped, the top shelf and middle shelf are both ready to have the angles cut but I want to get the sliding dovetail for the desk surface done first. And since I’ve been away and am now rusty, out with a bit of beech scrap to try to cut sliding dovetails in for practice.

On go the layout lines, out comes a scrap to run the router along to cut out the female part of the dovetail, I hog out the main part of the waste with a straight cutter and then cut the dovetail edges with the dovetail cutter I bought for this (it’s my only good router bit) I cut the female part out and then checked the board that I hadn’t yet cut the male part of the dovetail into and the whole board went into the female part leaving a gap.… Read the rest

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