Gadget Idea

[khaos]

A dovetail gadget.

I have Gary Campbell's dovetail routine but I was looking for something a little more polished.

Anyone got something like that?

[bleeth]

e-cabs-all parts lie flat on the table.

[cip]

What do you mean by "a little more polished" ?

[rcnewcomb]

Would you like the Aspire gadget to cut something similar to the e-cabinets style?
http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_bas...x_Joinery.html

[chiloquinruss]

Randall - Looks good. Bill Young had a dovetail routine that he was demonstrating at the San Mateo Camp. It was a more traditional look but either way, a dovetail gadget would be really cool! Russ

[khaos]

What do you mean by "a little more polished" ?

What I mean is 'in' the UI (user interface) of aspire. And the ability to choose location, direction, bit size ...

I know I am a spoiled user

[sailfl]

Dovetail gadget would be very nice.

Bill, can you share information on you dovetail routine?

Thanks

[bill.young]

If you're looking for easy this ain't it, but I've been experimenting with flatcutting traditional-ish dovetails as a 3d move with an 1/8" bit. The layout is done in partworks and the 3d cuts are ShopBot files that use variables to specify the dovetail. This allows you to do dovetails of just about any angle and size.

The downsides are:

1) It's slow because everything is cut with small stepover

2) At the moment it's a pretty manual process with some post-postprocessing of part files to place the dovetails. I was at the Maker Faire with Brian Moran, though, and he was interested in the process and we talked about the prospects of automating the process, so it might end up as a gadget

3) As with all sharp inside corners it needs a dogbone for the corners to fit, but to be honest I'm happy with things that look like what they are and like these sorts of obvious cnc-cut details. You may not.

Here's a link to some picture on Flickr, including a sample with dovetails with varying angles...the outside ones are 25 deg and 5 deg, the next ones are 20 deg and 10 deg, and the center one is both 15 degs. It would be awfully hard to do something like that any other way except with a saw and chisel.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/seaside...7624275444318/

Bill