Tried a new jig for dovetails and ruined 3 drawer fronts

I thought I had a good setup for cutting dovetails by hand, but last weekend I built a new jig out of plywood based on a YouTube video. Set it up on some scrap oak first and it worked fine, so I went straight to my cherry drawer fronts. Three of them ended up with gaps on the pins because the jig shifted about 1/16th inch after I clamped it. Learned that I need to double check the clamp pressure and maybe use a stop block next time. Has anyone else had a jig fail on them mid cut like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

irishenderson4d ago

Respectfully, that sounds like a setup problem not a jig problem. A 1/16th shift means you didn't have it locked down tight enough from the start.

kelly.keith4d ago

Lock it down tight? Tell that to my neighbor who used a full quart of Loctite on his project and still had his workpiece do a cha-cha slide halfway through the cut. That stuff turned his jig into a permanent fixture, but the shift still happened. Maybe the real secret is to just weld everything in place and deal with the fire hazard later.