Project 2

Project for half blind dovetail box carcass
White beech dovetailed sides & dark brown walnut front & back.
This project can also be applied to drawer fronts.

Illustration 14 -
Note the ends of the tail boards have been rebated.
The rebated ends are the actual length of the tails
and are approximately 3/4s the thickness of the
pin boards.  This aids in ease of marking out and
more importantly precision.  Further comment later
 on the reason for rebating the carcass sides.
See illustration 17.		  

Illustration 15 - Place the adjoining two boards with the rebated box sides or tail boards seated on the ends of the pin boards.
Make sure they are square.
Now lightly mark the “length” of the tails all along the edge of the pin boards.

Cutting the tails in the tailboard (or drawer sides if making drawers)
Illustration 16 & Illustration 4 -
using a square and a sharp knife cut as deep as possible a crisp line but only within the waste areas.
With the chisel, pare away small amounts as shown.
Proceed to chop waste cleaning up all internal corners.

Marking the pin board or drawer fronts
Illustration 17 -
Clamp all four boards using the rebated ends of the tail boards to form a carcass.
Make sure the carcass is square before marking the pin boards on all four corners.
This now becomes so much easier and precision in marking is guaranteed.
 

Illustration 18 -
Disassemble the carcass and transfer the depth of the tails onto the pin boards.
  

Illustration 19 -
Clamp both pin boards butted together in the vice and check with any straight edge that they are level and continuous on the top edges.

Setting up and cutting the pin boards or drawer fronts
Illustration 20 -
The pin boards are half cut with the AngleMag & saw whilst the rest is chiseled. The saw cut is confined to the length marks and the depth marks. Therefore, the saw needs to be angled with the handle of the saw lower than the workpiece.  In order to avoid damage to the saw glide from the saw teeth, packing is sandwiched between the workpiece and AngleMag.  This effectively raises the saw glide out of harm’s way.
 

Illustration 21 - Chopping the waste.
Clamp securely to the work bench and chop with chisel and mallet.
Take care when chopping out the end grain ensuring the chisel remains within the "length" mark in order to obtain a fine crisp finish.
Clean up all internal corners before dry fitting. Dry fitting prior to gluing.

Illustration 22 - Use a straight scrap piece of wood to gently tap the adjoining boards together making sure they go in square.
In this example, and due mainly to the micro adjustment and resultant matching cuts on the pin boards, there was no space available for glue. It does however have just a smear of glue.