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My drawer box dovetails went from gaps you could see daylight through to tight in about 6 weeks
Six weeks ago I could not cut a dovetail to save my life. Every drawer box had pins gapped wide enough to slide a dime into. I blamed the jig for a solid week. Then I watched myself work and caught it. I was rushing the setup and letting the stock ride up in the vise. I started checking square on every board with a small engineer square before it touched the jig, and ran 20 practice corners a night on scrap pine in my garage here in Lexington. Last Friday I glued up a set of 4 maple drawers and closed every joint with a light tap. No filler, no shims, nothing. I know it's small but I sat and looked at those corners for a while. What was the one habit that fixed your joinery, was it slowing down the setup or something else?
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carr.luna21h ago
My buddy had the same breakthrough with his dovetails but it wasn't setup, it was his sharpening. He kept fighting tearout and sloppy walls for months and kept buying jigs and guides. Turns out his chisels were dull enough that he was forcing cuts and the edge would wander off his line every time. He finally sat down with a sharpening stone one weekend, got a mirror finish on the bevel, and said the very next set of pins cut like butter. The tool went where he aimed it instead of skating. Your square-check habit is a good one, keeping the stock honest in the vise is half the battle. Sounds like you found the real fix, which is paying attention to what your hands are actually doing.
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