AWR Dovetail Master: Discontinued — What to Buy Instead

The AWR Dovetail Master is out of production and no longer available.

What separates dovetail jigs

Almost all of them cut a joint. The difference is what happens between cutting one and cutting the next.

Fixed-finger versus variable-finger. A fixed comb cuts evenly spaced dovetails at one spacing, and that spacing is visibly machine-made. A variable-finger jig lets you move each finger, so the joint can have the irregular spacing of hand work — narrow pins at the edges, wider in the middle. If you care how the joint looks, this is the whole argument.

Through versus half-blind. Half-blind is the drawer-front joint and every jig does it. Through dovetails — visible from both faces — need a jig that indexes the tails and pins separately, and not all of them do.

Setup repeatability. The real cost of a dovetail jig is the test cuts. A jig with positive stops and a scale you can return to lets you set up once and cut a whole kitchen’s worth of drawers. A jig that has to be dialled in by trial each session will sit unused.

The honest alternative

A dovetail jig plus a router plus the bits and guide bushings adds up to real money, and for a handful of drawers a year the maths does not work. Hand-cut dovetails need a saw, a chisel and a marking gauge, and they look better. Jigs win on volume, not on quality.

What to buy

The Leigh D4R-PRO, linked below, is the jig this category is measured against. It has individually adjustable fingers, so spacing is yours rather than the jig’s, and it cuts through dovetails, half-blinds and variations from the same body. It is expensive, and the reason people still buy it is that the setup is repeatable enough to trust on work that matters.

If you only need half-blind drawer joints and want to spend a fifth as much, a fixed-comb jig does that one job perfectly well. Go in knowing the spacing will always look like a jig cut it.