How to avoid cutting dovetails

I’m still working on the serving tray. I’m way slower than I though I would be. I think a big part of it is my thinking that I could get everything out of 1 1/2 board feet of 4/4 stock. Fool. I did cut and dimension the sides of the tray, only to decide that they were way too thin. Three-sixteenths is too thin, right? After all, I’ll be screwing up through the bottom into the sides. I need a little meat to bite into. It took me the weekend of not working on anything to come to that realization. On Monday I started dimensioning new stock for the sides. As of this afternoon, I’m ready to layout and cut dovetails. All my material is square and smooth. I probably could have started cutting today but I found a worthy distraction.

I’ve decided to give my tool chest another chance. I spent a few minutes taking all the silly things I never use out of it. I removed an antique level, a cigar box full of spare blades for different random tools, a massive compass, a full size rip saw that is duplicate to the one I use (which hangs on the wall). I found a new home for an old Disston back saw. This back saw is the distraction that I’d been looking for.

Last night I re-watched the video of Paul Sellers re-toothing a back saw. I decided then that I would use my neglected back saw to do the dovetails for the serving tray. First things first. That saw would need a straight and sharp blade.

To straighten the blade I tried two different methods. I think I remember hearing about hitting the spine with a hammer on the Fine Woodworking podcast. I gave that a shot. I actually tried that a bunch of times. I’d set the teeth on my bench and hit it squarely on the spine with a metal hammer. The spine is steel, not brass. The force I’d use was somewhere between a tap and a smack. I made many teeth marks in my bench. This method seemed to help. If you have one spot with a little wave or kink, this might be the answer, but it didn’t make it straight. The second method, I believe I saw on a Paul Sellers video. This method is to hold the saw, teeth up, and strike the spine on the top of your bench. This worked. I hit the spine as squarely as I could on my bench, driving the blade into the spine, or vise versa. The force I used for this method was at least a smack. Both of these methods are not for the timid, but once your blade is bent the time for action is at hand.

Look how wonky these gullets are. Chaos!

Sharpening the saw was generally uneventful. After jointing and filing an initial pass of 2 strokes per tooth, I realized that I should have been re-toothing.. I should have realized it before I began. I guess this is the price of inexperience. Anyway… It came to me filed for crosscut, and today I unapologetically filed it rip. After my initial filing pass, I came back and removed the flat tops of the teeth, probably making the teeth heights and gullets worse in the process. I made a few cuts and found it very hard to control. This thing only wanted to cut straight and would bind in the cut If I wasn’t tracking perfectly. Also, I could feel that some of the teeth were indeed taller than others. Ignoring the tooth height problem, I employed my saw set. Ron Hock recommends using as little set as possible, basically. This worked great. With my test cuts, I was able to control the saw and I was no longer feeling the taller teeth.

Practice cuts, starting on the right and getting better on the left.

I think part of today’s shop time was about procrastination. Maybe I’m scared to do the dovetails. That’s probably it. I kept trying to rationalize my procrastination by repeating Lincolns quote about chopping down a tree in four hours by sharpening his ax for the first three. I’m still not convinced. I think I’m just being a chicken.