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APRONS

I chose a piece of curly maple for my front apron, but since I’m too cheap to buy 8/4 curly maple, I laminated a piece that’s about ½” thick to a piece of my regular 8/4 stock. It’s nice to have a good flat surface to clamp to for something like this:

The tenons were fine-tuned to fit a 3/4″ dado in a test block that I created with a router bit. Then I cut a 3/4″ stopped dado in each of the end aprons with that same router bit.

The dadoes were stopped short of cutting through the back; the front didn’t matter, since the dado would become part of the dovetail design…. more on that later. I ran one piece over the bit, then flipped it around and used it to set the fence spacing for the other end (that’s actually what I’m showing in the pic above). This way I was able to use the proper feed direction on both ends. At this point I had all three aprons fitted, and ready to start the dovetails!

To make the dovetails, I laid out the tail design and cut it out on the bandsaw (1). I removed the waste between the tails with my jigsaw, cutting close to the baseline (2). I smoothed out the bandsaw marks a bit with a #50 rasp, being careful to avoid making a taper. I used a sharp chisel to pare down to the baseline. Then I transferred the tail layout to the pins board (3). I find that a whittling knife makes an excellent marking tool – better than any so-called “marking knife” that I’ve ever tried. I then cut close to the line with my dovetail saw (4). I intentionally cut far beyond the baseline, since this doesn’t show and really helps with the cleanout steps. Then I used a couple of chisels to hog out all the material between the saw kerfs (5), and finally to pare to the layout line (6).

1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

The result is a pretty reasonable half-blind dovetail joint, if you ask me!!!

The dovetail layout was designed to conceal the dado in each of the end aprons (see pic #2 above). They aren’t perfect, but they’ll do. This is the left corner (the end which will have the face vise):

And this is the right corner (the end with the twin-screw vise). I chipped out that corner of the middle tail when I was pulling out my jigsaw at the end of a cut…

I used through-dovetails for the back part of the tool tray. You can see now why the dado in the end aprons had to be stopped — they would show with through-dovetails. This is the back left corner:

This is the back right corner (the end with the tail vise):

…and here, with all the dovetail joints dry fitted, is the beast in all its glory!

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