Coping with Coping Saws

It's late, and I'm pretty frustrated with the coping saw. I finished off another set of dovetails, this time in poplar. It quite a bit more different than I was expecting. It's both more and less forgiving than the white pine has been the last couple days. The edges and corners stay sharper, whereas the pine tends to round itself over if you're not careful. On the other hand, the poplar shows even minor deviations in from a straight cutline. Ultimately, those don't seem to show up in the assembled joint, but it does enough to remind me that I'm still very much a beginner at this.

The coping saw was pretty much a disaster with the poplar pins. I didn't manage to keep a single cut above the baseline. The cutting radius is much larger than I was able to get through the pine, and there's quite a bit of damage on the backside of the cut as well. I think a large part of that is due to the thin kerf dovetail saw, and the coping saw blade being such a tight fit.

Even with the disastrous coping, the assembled joint is the tightest one yet. There is one tail that shows a sizeable gap. The rest seem pretty good. I still have issues sawing the end waste off the tails. I think less splitting the line and more keeping to the waste side might help that tomorrow. Pictures later.