Thanks James for taking on the challenge and letting me drive you a bit bonkers on this one. Working by hand with small pieces is certainly a challenge. The instructions have some jigs to help in your fabrication and use variations that I like. Pinch Rods with a few tweaks can be helpful with your layouts. Besides checking a box for square how are you going to use them?
Making that sliding dovetail by hand puts me in mind of making a harpsichord bridge which is sort of triangular in section. After decades of woodworking I don’t even have the skill to do the ripping. I shall make one as it’s a tool worth having. However I will cheat and use a router. I think making a dovetail shaped scraper might smooth out that dovetail slot if you are going the non machine route. I would have drilled and tapped those small pieces and afterwards cut to the final dimensions to avoid splitting. Great video.
A suggestion when adding new items to your store. Some of your pictures of available products are titled with white lettering. When the white lettering is superimposed on a white background the lettering becomes "invisible" and is either difficult to read or impossible to decipher. Solution: When designing your shop images make sure there is a relatively high contrast in colors between the background and the foreground (no white on white; white lettering on a gray background is passable, though the option exists to use a totally different color (red!) for the lettering such as with new products which would maximize the potential for additional sales. Thanx, the show is great!
My Go To tool to 'pinch-hit' for Pinch Dogs was my ever useful Mounting Points. Used as Pinch Dogs, I'd remove the points, clamp the arms together slightly to find the 'point to point' of inside corners, doorway RO's . My bag of tricks needed to correct mistakes of others needed to be secretive. The 'tools' might only be string lines, pinch dogs, and shims of Go ,No Go's, Plum Bob's(or Jane's)but they turned desastrous into passing grade and earned me the nickname: Mission Impossible.
So it took about 2 minutes to pause at the right point to read the geek shirt! Well worth the effort, now starting over for the woodworking part. lololol
James, love your work! I am a model maker (35 years), and have a tip for you and the viewers: when using accelerant with CA glues, instead of SPRAYING that nasty-smelling stuff, there are accelerant brands (Zip-Kicker is one) that come in non-aerosol bottles, sold in bottles w/a little pump spray bottles. If you transfer the liquid into a “capillary bottle” (a needle-topped bottle used for applying solvent to join Plexiglas parts together-Weld-On carries these, as do any shops that sell acrylic sheet), you can apply the tiniest droplet of accelerant precisely where you want, thereby sparing your nose and lungs those noxios fumes AND make a small bottle last you about a hundred years. It only takes a drop to kick off your joint, and it makes the job safer and less stinky. BONUS TIP: if you get some CA on the needle tip and cause it to clog (and everybody will, at some point), simply hold the needle over a flame for a second, while simultaneously squeezing the upside-down bottle… VOILA! No more clog! (Zip-Kicker isn’t flammable, btw.) I learned this decades ago, and can’t believe the glue companies have never sold it this way. Do this, and trust me, you’ll never spray it again!
Awesome... I'd love to see how they were made in the old school days. Wish we had a better look at the ones in that old Framer's chest. Oh, well. Maybe I'll come across some at some antique shop or peddlers mall and they will be affordable because they won't know what they have.
You certainly have patience to work with such fragile pieces! Thank you for Beta Testing the plans!! I am thinking of a modification to make the ends with a bit more meat and set your pins in a “Co-Planer”. You would prepare your stock with a 2” or so long L shape that makes the tool take a perfect rectangular prism shape when closed. The thicker end section would give you more meat for the inserts and allow the pins to be in line with one another. I have a tremor in my hands so working with super small stock is not always possible, but I think scaling up the plans would be my solution for the intricacies. It would be a simple modification much like your modification to carve out the female portion of the sliding dovetail. James I thank you for your thoughtfulness, humor, and extremely intelligent joke T-shirts! I haven’t heard a good “i” joke in ages!! i is always i, but I squared makes you a negative One. Thank you James as always, -CY Castor
I've seen a woodworking enthusiasts video about hakone that uses a planing jig for making precise angles on small pieces. Worth checking out. Also, tapping on the lathe gets you a perfect start. Just back the wheel with a square piece of wood with a hole in it on the tailstock, chuck the tap in the spindle, lock the spindle and turn the knob while pushing on the tailstock. Never stripped a hole or broke a tap yet
I have made the "Pinchy Sticks" that the Woodwright Shop show how to do and love them. I think i will try your method for their degree of difficulty and I need another set anyway!
Aloha James, Pinch Dogs can save time and materials because #1- you don't waste time from mistakes, #2- squaring becomes automatic ,#3- having multiple Pinch Dogs , you have a pack of Dogs, who's only wish is to be right there , at your neck and call. And they don't bark up the wrong tree or keep you awake barking at the Moon 😅.
Really brilliant, James! 😃 And with the pointy screws you can also measure the corners of a box to make sure it's square. 😊 Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Hey James, a very helpful tip I've picked up from Paul Sellers is that when using combo planes and specialty planes ect. Its best to start at the far end and work your way back instead of cutting the whole length. Just something to try, planing the length of the board might work better for you.
I have a shop made dovetail plane (it started life as a skewed rabbet plane) so the male portion of the sliding mechanism is easy. I generally make the female portion with a saw and angle jig but I probably would use the jig with a chisel for these. I would groove the board and then rip. All that said, I’m thinking T-tracks would make the build more accessible. A rabbet on opposite sides of the piece for a T- block. Two L- moldings glued to a piece for the T-track. Just a thought.
James, I appreciate your tenacity in making those rods. But I must say, off the top of my head there are simpler ways to do it that would make it more accessible for folks to make. I like Reeds idea of the kit, but the parts don’t seem to match the size wood. Food for thought. Cheers.
yes. theys are overly fancy versions of them. I will have other videos coming next week to show more traditional methods. these are for the people that want to do fancy.
Very nice project, nicely explained. Is there a hand tool (like a Stanley 45 with some sort of special dovetail cutters) that could be used to make the sliding dovetail joints?
I have seen a few people make specialty cutters for it but it requires you adjusting the fence every single pass. So it can be difficult to get a really fine fit.
Seems like building the grooves might be easier by using wider pieces while doing the angles. One wide (relatively speaking) plank for the base. Two wide planks with bevels on the edges. Bring those two beveled planks together to the appropriate width for the dovetail groove. Glue those together, and then rip the whole thing to final width. You can even use the sliders, pre-made to your desired width, to get the spacing perfect without fiddling with narrow stock. It's basically the same technique as doing moldings on the edge of a board, and then ripping them off to final size.
sure. the plans actually call for laminating veneer for it. basically the same thing just with hard wood instead of something like birch with a soft wood core.
Baltic Birch has about 17 layers per 1" With veneer you get 40 -50 layers per inch. Not hard to do, a much better material and I think worth the effort if you do not use metal. Also Baltic birch is getting expensive and hard to get.
Would it help to add taller blocks to the two ends where you put the screws? Then the brass inserts where you put the screws can be in line with the middle.
It actually doesn't help at all to have them in line with each other. It's kind of counterintuitive but it's just more work without any actual benefit. Because you're measuring from point to point, they don't have to be in line. It's just the distance between two points.
Whoa whoa whoa wait a minute. I’m starin at your face like “I know this guy” but not from woodworking. Didn’t you used to do videos for Wizards Unite? Which I used to watch like crazy when I played for like year and half
Good day, Mr. Wright. I would strongly recommend you get yourself a machinist vice for building small wood or metal parts. Your example of tapping and errors could easily been avoided with such a vise. First off, the grip is like iron (pun intended). By that I mean it is very positive with no deviation from flush with the top of the jaw grips even when you use stock as thin as one-eighth. I stopped using my bench tail or face vice for tiny pieces years ago. It is much easier to register a try-square on the metal jaws to ensure the piece is flush with the jaw top therefore allowing you to start your tap perpendicular more accurately. They come in different sizes and the "grips" can be exchanged for different materials like phenolic, UHMW nylon etc. I never have an issue anymore. The added bonus is, you will be raising your tiny workpiece up several inches making it more comfortable to work on and see the tap alignment. Mine is mounted on a piece of .75" plywood with a cleat suitable for the face vise to hang on to. Keep up what you are doing; good info coupled with some tounge-in-cheek goofiness. Thanks from a viewer in Alberta, Canada.
I totally understand wanting to do a dovetail (because well...theyre dovetails) but it seems like it would be easier to make the channel square instead. Make a groove in two pieces, glue the grooved sides together and run another groove down the middle to create the channel. Groove both sides of the sliding piece so it fits and there you go.....after having typed that I realize it sounded better in my head but Im sure you get the idea lol
I dont understand why u thought it would be easier to glue those two tiny little pieces together than it would have been to just cut a piece of wood to the proper size...
Thanks James for taking on the challenge and letting me drive you a bit bonkers on this one. Working by hand with small pieces is certainly a challenge. The instructions have some jigs to help in your fabrication and use variations that I like. Pinch Rods with a few tweaks can be helpful with your layouts. Besides checking a box for square how are you going to use them?
Making that sliding dovetail by hand puts me in mind of making a harpsichord bridge which is sort of triangular in section. After decades of woodworking I don’t even have the skill to do the ripping. I shall make one as it’s a tool worth having. However I will cheat and use a router.
I think making a dovetail shaped scraper might smooth out that dovetail slot if you are going the non machine route. I would have drilled and tapped those small pieces and afterwards cut to the final dimensions to avoid splitting.
Great video.
The scraper is a great idea. one side at a time or both sides on a pass? Need to go experiment!
A suggestion when adding new items to your store. Some of your pictures of available products are titled with white lettering. When the white lettering is superimposed on a white background the lettering becomes "invisible" and is either difficult to read or impossible to decipher. Solution: When designing your shop images make sure there is a relatively high contrast in colors between the background and the foreground (no white on white; white lettering on a gray background is passable, though the option exists to use a totally different color (red!) for the lettering such as with new products which would maximize the potential for additional sales. Thanx, the show is great!
My Go To tool to 'pinch-hit' for Pinch Dogs was my ever useful Mounting Points. Used as Pinch Dogs, I'd remove the points, clamp the arms together slightly to find the 'point to point' of inside corners, doorway RO's . My bag of tricks needed to correct mistakes of others needed to be secretive. The 'tools' might only be string lines, pinch dogs, and shims of Go ,No Go's, Plum Bob's(or Jane's)but they turned desastrous into passing grade and earned me the nickname: Mission Impossible.
So it took about 2 minutes to pause at the right point to read the geek shirt! Well worth the effort, now starting over for the woodworking part. lololol
James, love your work! I am a model maker (35 years), and have a tip for you and the viewers: when using accelerant with CA glues, instead of SPRAYING that nasty-smelling stuff, there are accelerant brands (Zip-Kicker is one) that come in non-aerosol bottles, sold in bottles w/a little pump spray bottles. If you transfer the liquid into a “capillary bottle” (a needle-topped bottle used for applying solvent to join Plexiglas parts together-Weld-On carries these, as do any shops that sell acrylic sheet), you can apply the tiniest droplet of accelerant precisely where you want, thereby sparing your nose and lungs those noxios fumes AND make a small bottle last you about a hundred years. It only takes a drop to kick off your joint, and it makes the job safer and less stinky.
BONUS TIP: if you get some CA on the needle tip and cause it to clog (and everybody will, at some point), simply hold the needle over a flame for a second, while simultaneously squeezing the upside-down bottle… VOILA! No more clog! (Zip-Kicker isn’t flammable, btw.) I learned this decades ago, and can’t believe the glue companies have never sold it this way. Do this, and trust me, you’ll never spray it again!
Awesome... I'd love to see how they were made in the old school days. Wish we had a better look at the ones in that old Framer's chest. Oh, well. Maybe I'll come across some at some antique shop or peddlers mall and they will be affordable because they won't know what they have.
At 7:38 you look very focused... Also I love how you show the side of trial and error woodworking that isn't often on RUclips.
You certainly have patience to work with such fragile pieces! Thank you for Beta Testing the plans!!
I am thinking of a modification to make the ends with a bit more meat and set your pins in a “Co-Planer”.
You would prepare your stock with a 2” or so long L shape that makes the tool take a perfect rectangular prism shape when closed. The thicker end section would give you more meat for the inserts and allow the pins to be in line with one another.
I have a tremor in my hands so working with super small stock is not always possible, but I think scaling up the plans would be my solution for the intricacies. It would be a simple modification much like your modification to carve out the female portion of the sliding dovetail.
James I thank you for your thoughtfulness, humor, and extremely intelligent joke T-shirts! I haven’t heard a good “i” joke in ages!!
i is always i, but I squared makes you a negative One.
Thank you James as always,
-CY Castor
I like your approach for co-planer. I was thinking to bend the bolts. Hope to see your solutions.
I need to add some pinch rods to my tool box!
I've seen a woodworking enthusiasts video about hakone that uses a planing jig for making precise angles on small pieces. Worth checking out.
Also, tapping on the lathe gets you a perfect start. Just back the wheel with a square piece of wood with a hole in it on the tailstock, chuck the tap in the spindle, lock the spindle and turn the knob while pushing on the tailstock. Never stripped a hole or broke a tap yet
I have made the "Pinchy Sticks" that the Woodwright Shop show how to do and love them. I think i will try your method for their degree of difficulty and I need another set anyway!
Aloha James,
Pinch Dogs can save time and materials because #1- you don't waste time from mistakes, #2- squaring becomes automatic ,#3- having multiple Pinch Dogs , you have a pack of Dogs, who's only wish is to be right there , at your neck and call. And they don't bark up the wrong tree or keep you awake barking at the Moon 😅.
Very cool. I'm glad I stuck around to the end to find out what pinch rods were. xD
WOW! now that is a purpose of a few of my late 1700s- early 1800s user made planes!
Really brilliant, James! 😃
And with the pointy screws you can also measure the corners of a box to make sure it's square. 😊
Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Hey James, a very helpful tip I've picked up from Paul Sellers is that when using combo planes and specialty planes ect. Its best to start at the far end and work your way back instead of cutting the whole length. Just something to try, planing the length of the board might work better for you.
I have a shop made dovetail plane (it started life as a skewed rabbet plane) so the male portion of the sliding mechanism is easy. I generally make the female portion with a saw and angle jig but I probably would use the jig with a chisel for these. I would groove the board and then rip.
All that said, I’m thinking T-tracks would make the build more accessible. A rabbet on opposite sides of the piece for a T- block. Two L- moldings glued to a piece for the T-track. Just a thought.
James, I appreciate your tenacity in making those rods. But I must say, off the top of my head there are simpler ways to do it that would make it more accessible for folks to make. I like Reeds idea of the kit, but the parts don’t seem to match the size wood. Food for thought. Cheers.
yes. theys are overly fancy versions of them. I will have other videos coming next week to show more traditional methods. these are for the people that want to do fancy.
What a neat project. Another great video James.
Excellent video. I really could use those in a pinch.
Very nice project, nicely explained. Is there a hand tool (like a Stanley 45 with some sort of special dovetail cutters) that could be used to make the sliding dovetail joints?
I have seen a few people make specialty cutters for it but it requires you adjusting the fence every single pass. So it can be difficult to get a really fine fit.
Seems like building the grooves might be easier by using wider pieces while doing the angles. One wide (relatively speaking) plank for the base. Two wide planks with bevels on the edges. Bring those two beveled planks together to the appropriate width for the dovetail groove. Glue those together, and then rip the whole thing to final width. You can even use the sliders, pre-made to your desired width, to get the spacing perfect without fiddling with narrow stock.
It's basically the same technique as doing moldings on the edge of a board, and then ripping them off to final size.
I’ve been wanting to make these for a while now. Good video
As a math teacher, I LOVE YOUR SHIRT! Where did you buy that?
That was a Christmas gift, I think it came from Amazon.
Hhhmmm....was that a brace with a drill chuck...??
Very interesting.
Every now and then the demon yellow brace comes out.
I found it by end
Kind of want to make this now! 😁
Approximately how much time was spent making this ? Thanks for the info and above all, thanks for posting.
I have about 6 hours total in the project. But if I were to do it now knowing what I know I'd probably have it done in around 2:00 to 2 and 1/2 hours.
I use candle wax on the bottom of my planes you get a bag of tea lights for virtually no money 😊
For the double dovetail piece, instead of gluing up a laminate piece, why not use a piece of Baltic birch plywood?
sure. the plans actually call for laminating veneer for it. basically the same thing just with hard wood instead of something like birch with a soft wood core.
Baltic Birch has about 17 layers per 1" With veneer you get 40 -50 layers per inch. Not hard to do, a much better material and I think worth the effort if you do not use metal. Also Baltic birch is getting expensive and hard to get.
Would it help to add taller blocks to the two ends where you put the screws? Then the brass inserts where you put the screws can be in line with the middle.
It actually doesn't help at all to have them in line with each other. It's kind of counterintuitive but it's just more work without any actual benefit. Because you're measuring from point to point, they don't have to be in line. It's just the distance between two points.
Whoa whoa whoa wait a minute. I’m starin at your face like “I know this guy” but not from woodworking. Didn’t you used to do videos for Wizards Unite? Which I used to watch like crazy when I played for like year and half
Yup. That was me.
Goood morning great Santiago.
needed a ww on the bolt
Good day, Mr. Wright. I would strongly recommend you get yourself a machinist vice for building small wood or metal parts. Your example of tapping and errors could easily been avoided with such a vise. First off, the grip is like iron (pun intended). By that I mean it is very positive with no deviation from flush with the top of the jaw grips even when you use stock as thin as one-eighth. I stopped using my bench tail or face vice for tiny pieces years ago. It is much easier to register a try-square on the metal jaws to ensure the piece is flush with the jaw top therefore allowing you to start your tap perpendicular more accurately. They come in different sizes and the "grips" can be exchanged for different materials like phenolic, UHMW nylon etc. I never have an issue anymore. The added bonus is, you will be raising your tiny workpiece up several inches making it more comfortable to work on and see the tap alignment. Mine is mounted on a piece of .75" plywood with a cleat suitable for the face vise to hang on to. Keep up what you are doing; good info coupled with some tounge-in-cheek goofiness. Thanks from a viewer in Alberta, Canada.
Where's the White Oak?
I totally understand wanting to do a dovetail (because well...theyre dovetails) but it seems like it would be easier to make the channel square instead. Make a groove in two pieces, glue the grooved sides together and run another groove down the middle to create the channel. Groove both sides of the sliding piece so it fits and there you go.....after having typed that I realize it sounded better in my head but Im sure you get the idea lol
yes there are a lot of easer ways to make them, but with this one we wanted to make a fancy set. I will be making a traditional set here soon.
Comment down below
First!!!
Nice work on double first.
See Roy Underhill's simpler version on Woodwright's shop.
That’s why I use only wood dogs 🐕:))
Nice job, but I think you always choose the wrong length of sticks. 2 Pointed scrap pieces and a spring clamp will usually do the job for me
The heck is a pinch stick n used for???
I dont understand why u thought it would be easier to glue those two tiny little pieces together than it would have been to just cut a piece of wood to the proper size...
Funny . Hes making pinch rods using a TAPE MEASURE . Cant see the wood for the trees
Just like you can't make a plane without a plane lol
Why would they sell you a "kit" that you have to modify the hardware for? Seems lazy...
That is the way most kits come. otherwise you have to spend more for the kit to have it all processed for you.