Beall, Router Tables, etc.

Few things. The thread type in cut by the generic thread box is not the same as the thread cut by the Beall. This results in my Moxon Double-Screw being a bit shorter than specified in Popular Woodworking. The pitch on the Beall is a bit larger than with the thread box. I tried to re-tap the holes on the vise but it was only partly successful. I could thread the screw most of the way through, but by the far side of the vise, pitch was out enough to begin shearing the threads off the screw.

I cut a pair of handles for the screws out of some hard maple scraps. This would be my first attempt at gluing up anything beyond screw covers. To say it turned into a horrendous mess would be an understatement. Thankfully the blocks were oversized enough to accept another round of milling to remove all the squeeze out. I bored out the handles on the drill press to accept the unthreaded dowel, but the new dowel from Beall was a bit smaller than the 1 1/2" hole, so i press fit the screw cut from my previous dowel, and screwed it in place. The boring operation was a bit off vertical for one of the handles for reason as yet undetermined. I checked the alignment of the table to the bit and it seems ok.

After all the fussing with the thread box, it was a pleasure to use the Beall threading system. I know it's not supposed to be mounted to a router table, but I don't have a standalone router. It looks a bit odd, but it works great. Well, except for the dust collection. The chips are all rejected out the bottom (normally the top) of the Beall thread box, so the dust collection hood on the router table is pretty ineffective.

2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back

At least there's progress here, and not a complete regression. I felt pretty bold today after what I considered a pretty good 5th set yesterday. So for the fifth set I moved on to a scrap piece of hard maple. This was from a combination of misplaced confidence and a bit of laziness in not wanting to cut the dovetail joint off the poplar scraps.

Successes first. Here's the dovetail from yesterday. One unsightly gap, and the one side seems to be out wide a bit. I'm not sure at this point what to attribute that to since the both sides were cut from the same piece of poplar, so they began the same width. The opposite side is flush and is parallel. The end cuts were over the baseline again, but I think I have that solved on today's set. The horrific coping job is apparent in the second shot. I did some things today to try and keep from wreaking havoc with the coping saw. Some of it was necessitated by what is ridiculously hard maple.

Set 5 

So my maple scraps were a bit narrower than the poplar pieces I was working with. Also, I thought it might be a nice time to try out my other dovetail marking guide. Put those two things together, and I ended up with the problem below. I felt pretty good after cutting the tails. I thought I did a pretty reasonable job sawing. I managed to chisel out the waste without going below the baseline, except on one. Although it was a bit out of perpendicular to the face, so I think I could've placed it on the interior of the joint, out of sight. I noticed that the way I start the saw kerf chipped a couple of the tails, so I'll have to keep an eye on that in the future.

After all this, the problem hit me smack in the face as I finished laying out and sawing the pins. I can't chisel out the waste on the pin board since my narrowest chisel is 1/4". Nicely demonstrated below by my chisel and the bottom of the tail. Measure twice, cut once? When one doesn't measure, I suppose the inference is that the layout should be checked twice.

Set 6 (and 1/2)

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.