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Fix dovetail screwups before or after glueup?

S

SteveMP

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Steve
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Working on the travel chest, most of the dovetails came out pretty good. “Good enough for government work” as the saying goes. However, 1 of them i was way off on the cut for some reason so there is a gap slightly over 1 mil. Another ones WAS ok but when i pressed it all together to test fit, one was too tight and when i hammered it apart a piece snapped off. Now normally i would say its a travel chest thats going to get banged up. BUT, i am using this to practice my hand tool work and build skills and figured that being able to fix mistakes is a good skill. Should I glue on a thin piece to the tail and pare it down? Or should i glue it up and then shove a small tapered filet into the hole? Or something else?IMG_2148.jpegIMG_2149.jpegIMG_2150.jpeg
 
Oooh, that must have made a few "choice words" come out.

If it were me I think I'd try to do everything I can pre-glue-up. At least that way you've always got post-glue-up as a fall-back option. For really tiny gaps it's probably easier post-glue-up (sometimes just some careful choice of planing direction is enough to hide the evidence) but for anything big it feels easier to me to deal with it early while there's still time to remove the repair and have another go if it doesn't look quite right.

However, I'm really not claiming any expertise in this and I'm sure others will be along shortly with advice born of more experience. If that had happened on my travel tool chest I think I would have been rummaging in the wood pile to see if I could find another piece to replace one of the bits entirely. Note that I'm not suggesting you do so, just that I got a bit precious with the joints on my tool chest by the time it was done!
 
Dr.Al said:
Oooh, that must have made a few "choice words" come out.

If it were me I think I'd try to do everything I can pre-glue-up. At least that way you've always got post-glue-up as a fall-back option. For really tiny gaps it's probably easier post-glue-up (sometimes just some careful choice of planing direction is enough to hide the evidence) but for anything big it feels easier to me to deal with it early while there's still time to remove the repair and have another go if it doesn't look quite right.

However, I'm really not claiming any expertise in this and I'm sure others will be along shortly with advice born of more experience. If that had happened on my travel tool chest I think I would have been rummaging in the wood pile to see if I could find another piece to replace one of the bits entirely. Note that I'm not suggesting you do so, just that I got a bit precious with the joints on my tool chest by the time it was done!
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Yeah I may work on making some wedges for the wedged tenons and use some scrap from that process to get some thin pieces to glue on. For me, I know its going to get banged up as I often drive 500 miles to see family and work on stuff there, so not being precious at all with this. Just wanting it to start out decent and get some skill building practice. One of the best woodworkers I knew on another forum, he always said he didn't have the greatest skills at woodworking, but he could fix anything. He took a course from Mohawk on furniture repair. He could mix multiple melt-in blend sticks to match any wood/furniture finished or not,, spraying on tinted coats of lacquer etc. I don't have $5,000 for the class so just trying to learn bits here and there.
 
SteveMP said:
For me, I know its going to get banged up as I often drive 500 miles to see family and work on stuff there, so not being precious at all with this. Just wanting it to start out decent and get some skill building practice.
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I think that's similar to my attitude with this (and most things I make if I'm honest). If I do a good job of making it and I'm pleased with the initial look of it then I'm happy. If it gets dings and knocks from being used then that's just a sign it's being used and appreciated so that's fine.
 
David Charlesworth showed me a small box Rob Cosman gave him. The four sides were joined with dovetails and David asked me to have a close look at it and tell him what I thought about the quality. After a few minutes of examining it, I gave it back to David and told me it looked good to me. Then he pointed out the six fixes Rob made to correct fit problems with the dovetails.

All of the fixes were various sizes of shims to fill in the gaps, with meticulous care to match the grain of the wood. David told me the goal was to make flawless dovetails, but failing that the next goal was to correct the mistakes so they looked like flawless dovetails to the casual observer.
 
Mike said:
David Charlesworth showed me a small box Rob Cosman gave him. The four sides were joined with dovetails and David asked me to have a close look at it and tell him what I thought about the quality. After a few minutes of examining it, I gave it back to David and told me it looked good to me. Then he pointed out the six fixes Rob made to correct fit problems with the dovetails.

All of the fixes were various sizes of shims to fill in the gaps, with meticulous care to match the grain of the wood. David told me the goal was to make flawless dovetails, but failing that the next goal was to correct the mistakes so they looked like flawless dovetails to the casual observer.
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Cosman has a video somewhere showing how he does these repairs to his shovetails, but in all honesty, he shouldn't have to but as I said earlier, these things do happen. On the almost completed current project in Bubinga there were plenty of things that went pear shaped (and were subsequently fixed), but the shovetails weren't one of them - Rob
 
Woodbloke said:
Cosman has a video somewhere showing how he does these repairs to his shovetails, but in all honesty, he shouldn't have to but as I said earlier, these things do happen. On the almost completed current project in Bubinga there were plenty of things that went pear shaped (and were subsequently fixed), but the shovetails weren't one of them - Rob
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Thanks, I'll look for it, I have seen a lot of Cosman videos but there are tons. If i remember correctly he said certain woods are easier to make perfect dovetails, like a hardwood front and softwood sides allows the softwood to compress into the hardwoods. Whereas if you make a box from exotic tropical wood, there is no room for error. He basically said in one video that if you don't make any mistakes then you aren't cutting enough dovetails lol.
 
Six dovetail errors in one box! I find that astonishing. I wonder if he did it deliberately as a teaching exercise in how to correct errors.
 
Polyfiller and paint.
The box is only going to be knocked around in transit,
Try harder on the next box,

Bod1.
 
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