Still miss the old way of cutting dovetails by hand some days

I started out in this trade back in the late 90s in a little shop outside Seattle, and we cut all our dovetails by hand with a chisel and coping saw. Took forever but there was something satisfying about it. Now I use a Leigh jig for production work and it's way faster, but I feel like I lost some of the feel for tight joinery. Anyone else feel like power tools took some of the soul out of cabinetmaking?

2 comments

2 Comments

terry_jones13d ago

Nah, not power tools. Its the jigs that do it. A Leigh jig takes over the thinking. That machine decides the angle and spacing. Hand cutting those tails by hand forced you to read the grain and adjust on the fly. You felt the wood push back. A router just chews through whatever you give it.

andrew_rodriguez13d ago

Man, I keep a cheap set of chisels just for practice cuts when I'm winding down.