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If you prefer your woodworking to be of the hammer and nail
variety, or the block plane and chisel variety instead of the noisy power
tool type, chances are you might have also already tried to cut your own
dovetail joints with a hand saw, or would like to give it a try in the
very near future. One of the keys to successfully mastering hand-cut dovetail
joints is in the marking and preparation of your timber pieces, and there
is no finer mark of quality in a hand-built project than the presence of
hand-cut dovetails. It's not for the faint-hearted, but with a little
practice and the right equipment, the task can be made much easier. Apart
from a good fine-toothed hand saw or a dedicated dovetail saw, you will
also need some way of marking out where to cut your dovetails. This can be
done with just a simple ruler and a protractor, but that will take half
the day just to do the marking! Enter the range of dovetail markers now
readily available on the market. These simple tools make marking out
dovetails a relatively simple affair, and best of all, your day will be
spent actually working wood instead of fiddling around with pencils,
scribes and flimsy rulers. The AWR Dovetail Master is just one product on the
market. We picked up one to take a closer look. It is made and offered by
the folks at Australian Wood Review Magazine, one of Australia's leading
woodworking magazines. The Dovetail Master can be ordered either
completely assembled and ready to use, or as an unassembled kit. The
unassembled kit (AUD$39 delivered to Australia and AUD$45.50 delivered
around the globe) is roughly half the price of the assembled kit (AUD$69
and AUD$85 respectively), which is reasonably priced for a nice brass and
quality wood hand tool.
If you purchase the assembled kit, it will come shipped
ready to use. If you opt for the unassembled kit you will need to assemble
the dovetail master yourself. This involves various steps, including
gluing, drilling, screw-driving, filing and sanding. Full assembly
instructions are provided on a well laid out and detailed printed card
which leaves no doubt as to how to assemble the dovetail master (as shown
below).
Whether you purchase the assembled or unassembled
version, you will have the choice of numerous species of wood to form the
"base" of the marker. Species available are as follows:
The brass components are all CNC milled from solid brass
for ultra accuracy and a smooth finish. Once assembled, the Dovetail
Master will allow you to mark lumber up to 2 7/16" thick (62mm) so it will
be able to handle pretty much all of your marking needs. I measured the
slope roughly and it comes to about 1 : 7 3/4 which makes it more suitable
for use with hardwoods than softwoods, although from some articles I have
read online, the slope doesn't seem to make a huge amount of difference
(unless you are talking about very large slope angle differences) if the
joint is constructed using a good quality wood glue as well and the joint
itself is relatively firm fitting. Once correctly
assembled you not only get a reference edge set at the correct angle for
marking dovetails on the end of a board, but a perfect right angle
reference for marking the straight depth lines for the dovetail on the
face of the board. I won't go into how you exactly go about spacing and
marking the dovetails as it is beyond the scope of this review, plus,
there are probably hundreds of books and several websites that show you
how to do this, but the AWR Dovetail Marker will ensure very accurate
marking of your workpiece in preparation to hand-cut your dovetail joints.
I'll admit that I have never really been much of a hand
tool fan, but the combination of solid brass and nicely finished wood is
always appealing to me and, sometimes, woodworking the "old-fashioned" way
just gives you that sense of accomplishment and 'hard work' you often miss
when speeding through a project using power tools.
If you are planning to have a go at hand-cutting dovetails,
grab yourself a marking tool like the AWR Dovetail Master. It makes the
marking task that much simpler and easier, plus it looks the part too. A
nice addition to your range of hand tools.
For more information on the AWR Dovetail Master, head on over to the
Australian Wood Review website.
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Dovetail Master Photos
All photos copyright onlinetoolreviews.com. Use without prior
written permission prohibited
The unassembled dovetail master kit
The dovetail master shown here fully assembled
It not only works great, but looks great as well!
Marking out dovetails ready for sawing
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