Reply To: Dovetails: Help please…
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Best guess is that your hitting the chisel far too hard. Light taps to deepen the shoulder then pare out the waste. In soft wood try for 1mm depth at each pass, at the most. You can’t bash away at the waste wood. You have to coax it out. Sound is another thing that will help. You should never hear a dull thud when you hit the chisel when its on the baseline. If you hit it hard and deep enough to hear the dull thud, you’ve moved the baseline.
Here is a quick way to get an idea of how hard you can hit the chisel. Knife a line across a board. Now pare down from one side. Like you were going to cut the board to length. No place your chisel at the far end in a chopping position and give it a light tap. Move down the knife wall one chisel width and hit the chisel a little harder. Work your way across the board hitting a little harder each time. You’ll see when you’ve hit the chisel too hard. There will be an indent in the knife wall the width of your chisel.