A dovetail jig is an excellent tool for making beautiful and durable joints. It also helps you make strong and attractive furniture and cabinets.
There are two primary types of dovetail jigs. The first is a fixed-template dovetail jig.
These jigs use one template for cutting the tails of a through dovetail pattern and a second interchangeable template for cutting the pins.
Pins
A dovetail joint is an important part of a woodworker’s repertoire. It enables the interlocking of two boards, which do not need mechanical fasteners to stick together. These finger-like joints are also noted for their strength and durability.
Hand-cut dovetails are a hallmark of fine craftsmanship, but they are not easy to master for many woodworkers. Luckily, there are now dovetail jigs that allow you to cut dovetails with less physical effort.
The jigs typically use templates to cut a specific pattern of pins and tails. These templates can vary in size and spacing to accommodate a wide range of joints.
In general, the template should be about half the width of the stock to be joined. It is important to determine the exact angle of the pins and tails before cutting them with a router. This is a critical step in constructing a perfect dovetail. It’s easy to ruin a perfectly good joint by selecting an improper angle.
Tails
Dovetail jigs are one of the strongest, yet most mechanically free methods for creating wooden joints. They are convenient, safe and cost-effective.
They can create a wide variety of joints, including box joint styles. They also make strong, neat, and accurate joints that look beautiful.
The best dovetail jigs include heavy-duty clamps and secure bases, as well as sturdy locking bars that prevent the device from moving during cuts. The base must be large enough to fit on your workbench and to firmly grip the wood you’re cutting.
A dovetail jig should have an adjustable fingerboard and a corresponding finger screw that allows you to change the pattern of pins and tails on the jig. Some jigs only come with templates for standard patterns; some have optional templates that let you cut more complex styles, such as those with larger tails or irregular spacing between the pins and tails.
Clamping
A dovetail jig is an essential tool for creating strong, beautiful, and long-lasting joints. These jigs are easy to set up and use, and they help you achieve accuracy and efficiency in your work.
Depending on the model you choose, dovetail jigs may include a variety of clamping options for holding the workpieces in place. Some may have a swivel clamp arm that can be adjusted to accommodate different sizes of workpieces, while others feature fast cam action clamps that hold the workpieces quickly and securely.
Another type of clamping used in dovetail jigs is the traditional rabbet joint. The rabbet is a shallow cut across one end of the workpiece. It’s designed to align the two sides of the jig so that they can be fitted to the dovetail template.
This rabbet joint can be made with any size and thickness of stock, such as a Y inch-thick drawer front, a Y indt plywood side, a Y*-inch solid-wood front, or a Y*-inch drawer bottom. It can be cut without a hitch from top to bottom using a router and a typical dovetail jig.
Alignment
A dovetail jig is an excellent tool for machining decorative joinery. It produces strong and durable joints. But it’s not a quick fix for accuracy; dialing in a jig’s template slightly forward or backward, changing the router bit depth or altering how workpieces are offset from one another inside the jig all influence how well parts align and fit together.
Unless you have a good eye for alignment, this can be a frustrating process. Especially when you’re repositioning the jig for a wider board: A small mistake here can keep your joint from coming together at all.
To prevent this, square the ends of your boards before clamping them in the jig. It’s also important to make sure the end of the tail board and pin board are exactly the same width.