Perhaps you’ve thought about cutting dovetails but felt they would be too difficult. Maybe you tried but the results were disappoint­ing. Or perhaps it’s been so long since you last cut dovetails that your confidence level has waned.

Well, this little dovetail guide won’t replace practice and attention to detail, but it will help you with one critical part of cutting dovetails: pre­cise, accurate sawing. With this guide you’ll be able to make straight, square cuts at perfect angles. You’ll still need to cut out the waste using a fret or jewellers’ saw, and then chisel down to the scribe line.

The guide is quick and easy to make. While not necessary, adding a laminate face will extend the life of the guide. You can also glue a cou­ple of pieces of sandpaper on the bottom of it to help keep it in position while sawing.

The angle you choose to use for your guide is a matter of personal preference. Any angle between 7° and 14° will work. Before making your guide, you might want to draw out different angles on a piece of paper and select the one that’s visually most pleasing to you. You could also make a few guides covering all the angles you will want to cut. If you do plan on making more than one guide, gluing one wider blank up, then cutting each guide from it, is an easier approach.

Prepare the blanks

You need only three small pieces of wood for this guide. Any hardwood will do, and the exact dimensions aren’t critical. For my guide the centre block is 7/8″ by 1-1/8″ by 1-5/8″. One wing is 1-5/8″ by 2″, the other (cut at the dovetail angle) is 1/2″ longer. The wings are about 1/4″ thick. The width of your saw blade and the thickness of the centre block will determine the maximum cut­ting depth. I’m able to cut pins and tails to just under 1″ long.

Glue them together

While you could glue the whole piece together at once, I find it easier to glue the two wings together first, and then glue the cen­tre block to the wings. The glue needs to set only for an hour or so before you move on to the next step.

Cut the dovetail angle

This is the critical part of the project. Begin by marking the dove­tail angle of your choice on the longer wing, then it’s off to the table saw. The block is small so exercise caution. I found it best to clamp the block to a sacrificial fence attached to the mitre gauge. You’ll need to reset the mitre gauge to cut the opposite side of the block. You want to maintain the exact same angle on both sides of the block.

Drill magnet holes

Set your drill press table to the angle you used at the table saw and drill holes for the magnets. I use the 3/4″ cupped mag­net set from Lee Valley (#99K3905) because the magnet can be easily removed from the cups and reused. The 3/4″ magnets in the #99K3325 set are difficult, if not impossible, to remove from the metal cups. Use a Forstner bit and take your time drilling the holes. You want the magnet flush or a hair’s breadth below the sur­face. (Note: If you decided to apply laminate to the surface of the guide do so before drilling the holes.)

In use

You don’t need to clamp the guide in place. Use your thumb to apply forward pressure on the clamp, your index finger to apply downward pressure and the other three fingers to apply pressure to your workpiece. Pencil in all the cut lines and then saw all the lines at the same angle. Then turn the workpiece around and saw the remaining lines. Make sure to stop your cuts just shy of the base­line. The guide will take care of the angles for you.

This guide won’t turn you into a dovetail guru overnight; for that you’ll still need a fair amount of practice. But it will speed things along, enabling you to cut perfectly angled dovetail pins and tails quickly and accurately.

What you need to get started

Along with this dovetail guide you’ll need a thin blade saw (my Japanese saw has a .30 mm blade with .05 mm of set on each side); a fret saw (their narrower blades work much better than the thick blades on cop­ing saws); a few chisels (make sure they’re sharp!); a mallet (for thumping those chisels); a marking gauge (to lay out the dovetail baselines); and a thin blade knife (to transfer layout lines to the pin board). For information on how to cut dovetails read “Hand Cut Dovetails” (Feb/Mar 2009).