Leon wrote:
"Tanus" wrote in message ...
Leon wrote:
Snip


Leon, granted that a DT will hold without glue over a box joint, and the
DTs would also give mechanical resistance over a box joint.

However, would it not also be a consideration that a box joint has more
glue surface and that would counteract the mechanical advantage of a DT?

A box joint could have more have more glue surface or less depending on
whether the box fingers are smaller than the tails and pins.

Regardless of the answer to that, my opinion is that dovetails are much
prettier than box joints, and as someone also pointed out, neither an
Akeda nor Leigh jig is necessary to make them. I've made them with a cheap
saw and cheaper chisels - not Akeda quality and uniformity, to be sure,
but passable and sssstrong as hell.


I used to make a bunch on a Sears $39 DT jig back in the early 80's. ;~)



I'm doing a follow up to my own post. While my dovetails are now
passable, it was not without a certain amount of pain getting there. I
made a vow to make a set each day for 30 days and document how each one
didn't measure up until I got it right. I made it til about 15 days, and
then real life interrupted. Tage Frid taught a trick of using veneer to
cover up mistakes (his example was one piece of veneer for 4 gazillion
dovetails - I ended up using 14 pieces for 14 joints)

I've also had wood split when I was a bit too judicious in driving the
joints home with a mallet.

I once made pins for both sides of a joint (Gawd, don't ask me how I
managed that)

I've overcut and undercut, and made the tails too wide. I've made SURE
that one side of the board was to be outside and then cut pins that
meant that side had to face inside.

I've forgotten about glue squeeze-out on the inside of a joint until it
was the hardness of dried concrete and impossible to reach without a
team of ants with scary-sharp (*™) micro chisels (available from Lee
Valley at $98/set)

Damn. After reviewing all those little issues, that Akeda is starting to
sound pretty good. How can I get one again?

Tanus