Big honkin' dovetails

Actually, that title may be a bit misleading. I have been working on big honkin' dovetails in 2X4's but I've also been thinking a lot about learning. Learning to cut dovetails has to be one of the hardest things I've ever done. I took the same course three times and didn't get all the projects done once. I was very glad there were no grades involved or I would have failed it three times.

Sometimes I wonder why I didn't give up on this process long ago, especially when I saw others in the classes turn out nearly perfect dovetails the first or second time. There are a couple of reasons. In the first place I'm just bloody stubborn. I don't want to leave something before I've developed a certain amount of facility with it. I remember when I was learning to swim, as an adult, that I had a lot of difficulty learning to do a stride jump. I just kept at it and eventually I got good enough at it to pass the level. Fundamentally I believe that I can learn. I used to feel for the kids who didn't think they could learn. My job as a teacher was to show them they were wrong about that. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I didn't.

The other reason I keep at the dovetails is because they are beautiful and I have seen that it's possible to learn how to cut them. I can make other kinds of boxes that are much quicker and people like them just as well but I want to be able to master this skill. I want the satisfaction of having the joint go together just right more times than not. Now I've narrowed the problem areas down to two and I'll take them on one at a time.

The dovetails I was working on today are part of a base for my scroll saw. Of course, anyone in their right mind probably would have used screws and glue or a biscuit joiner to put the thing together. To me, it's all practice and I need plenty of it. I'm still at the stage where good tight-fitting dovetails are the exception rather than the rule; however I now know enough to be able to see where the problems are. When I first started I didn't even know how to identify the problems. I know I have learned, not only because some parts of the joints are getting better, but also because I'm much more aware of the details than I was when I started. Part of learning is being able to do and part of learning is an altered awareness process.

The dovetails in the scroll saw base are not as tight as I'd like them but the base will be sturdy and, perhaps I'm a tiny step closer to being able to reliably produce the kind of joints I want, at least that is my hope. I'll put a picture of the finished base in another blog but there won't be any close-ups of the finished joints, at least not yet.