Drawer Making episode 2

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Paul’s second method for cutting a half-lapped dovetail uses a rebate to aid alignment of the joint. With the front of the drawer jointed, he ploughs the groove for the drawer bottom. The front is then fitted to the drawer recess and the sides are cut to length. With that done, we are prepared for the rear joinery.
Thank you for the lesson.
Paul this really exciting, you make it look so easy, thanks again for a great video.
Steve
Love those dovetails. Awesome!
Great to see the two approaches to the half-lap dovetail for the drawer front.
Is there any ‘rule of thumb’ for how big to make the rebate or the thickness of the remaining dovetail?
Thank you Paul! I never thought I would look so forward to Wednesday’s!
I’ve said this before, many months ago on YouTube, you are a Great Teacher, you know how to teach. Something many people who know how to do something, but don’t know how to teach someone else.
The detail you go into in explaining why you do a certain thing really helps with the understanding of why it is important. whether it is for an out come of a cut or just the love of wood. Thank you.
At 27:02 in this video you mention having made the cutter at a size less than 1/4″, presumably it is 6mm to fit plywood. I’ve not had much luck finding a 6mm cutter for the Record 044 so I am curious if you just ground down a 1/4″ cutter to size or started with bar stock such as when you show how to make a plane iron.
Hello Steve, we usually grind them down from the wider cutter.
Absolutely superb Paul, I loved it all the way through
You are awesome. I thank you for sharing you wealth of knowledge.
Fine lesson. And what a place to stop! Cliffhanger for sure. I love it.
Thank you !
Thank You WWMC team!
A Question…
Just so I’ve got this clear in my mind…
The two front joints, (front left and front right), with the sides, have not just been made using a different method to each other, they are actually different to each other mechanically, because of the offset used as a guide in the second method…
Is that right, the end result is that the joints are different?
If I have got that right, is one stronger/better than the other?
Thanks,
Regards,
Matt Sims
I finished making my first “pilot” attempt at a drawer last week for a table I’m making before seeing your video. You’ve just saved me a lot of frustration… Great “trade secrets”!
Any chance of doing a video on a poor mans plough plain?
Thank you, Paul, for sharing these free videos. You are generous.
What a pleasure to watch a true master work his craft, focused on the task at hand, without a bunch of “Tom-foolery” or “hub-bub” as you Brits call it, getting in the way!
Years ago I asked a woodworking friend to teach me how to cut some simple dovetails into 1/2″ BB ply to make some drawers for underneath my workbench. I’d never made DT’s before. He had, Further, he had a shop full of tools, and multiple DT jigs. What could go wrong?
Plenty.
Routers love to bust out/off the outer ply as the bit spins outwards. Further, he wasn’t as familiar with setting up either DT jig as I thought. Thus, seemingly endless hours spent fussing with it. My drawer side height was only 4″. To me, this should have been a slam-dunk. He had somewhere else to be, thus left me with it. (Thanks….) I thought to myself “This is nuts…I’ve never cut DTs, didn’t realize that different router bits were used, with different angles and several different “pages” of paper templates to go through.” I soon left out of frustration and realized my now-absent-friend didn’t know how to easily do this simple task either.
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