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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 10:49 am 
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Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood

Joined: Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:10 am
Posts: 2020
Location: Argentina
Someone asked how I do my dovetails, so here goes.
Pics will have to follow, later, but here is a description.

I use two standard torture devices for the dovetail, one for the neck blank and the other for the body rimset.

I don't have a clue why I didn't do it like everyone else, but I use the router table with moveable jigs to accomplish the task.

So, I clamp the neck blank into a post with a .25" spline on it. The base is hard rock maple and includes the dovetail pattern. I fire up the router and make three cuts. The first two cuts are using a straight router bit guided by a bearing follower. The purpose is to remove much of the stock without hogging too much wood directly with the dovetail bit, which I think is a lot of cutting, the flat plus the entire angled cut all at one time. So cutting in three bites of the apple made sense to me. The bits are both 1/4" shaft.

I make the dovetail cut into the rimset once it's glued up. The jig base contains an outside pattern, four locking clamps, and a cutaway holder for those rimsets which renders two of the clamps useless. I generally do the same on the cutting, first with the straight cutter then switch to the dovetail bit.

Rough fit of the neck into the body leaves it about 3/8" proud, that's when the fun begins. My first dovetail was on a Martin Kit, it took me eleven hours to work it and glue it. Numbers 2 and 3 took about three hours each. Finally on numbers 4 and 5, it only took 1 1/2 hours to fit and glue, which includes rough in and final.

Doing dovetails can be likened to learning to ride a bicycle. You get better and less apprehensive as you go. You just jump on and never look back, shirt-tail a-flyin'.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:10 am 
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Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
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Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 10:53 pm
Posts: 2198
Location: Hughenden Valley, England
"Fixing a hole in the ocean,
Trying to make a dove-tail joint - yeah
Looking through a Glass Onion"

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:00 pm 
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Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood

Joined: Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:10 am
Posts: 2020
Location: Argentina
Tradition told me so. I figured if I couldn't do dovetails I had no business building guitars.

But you are right Dave, it's a double compound miter, in both male and female joints, blind. Very satisfying.


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