I forgot to post these awesome photos of the zigzag bevels from a few weeks back. It was a joy cutting them with a new supersmooth sawblade with lots of teeth.

tablesaw setup for cutting zigzag bevels

The clamps hold the piece tight to a board that slides along the saw’s fence. Without this only a tiny edge would be riding on the surface of the saw. The orange plastic thing holds the piece being cut securely against that arrangement, helping to make sure the cuts come out straight and even.

all 22º zigzag bevels cut

The setup I made for cutting the dovetail coves wasn’t enough to cut the needed space in a single cut. Now I need to do another pass over them in order to get them deep enough and to cut the insides at the 8 degree angle needed to lean the backs.

Notice how the board clamped to the front side is angled. The router base will rest on it and cut at the same angle inside the joint.

router with fence

finishing up the dovetail coves

The router is an awesome, powerful tool that can make cove cuts that can’t be done with a saw. In the old days, you would use a some combination of saw & drill (auger, gimlet) to get rid of as much stock as possible and then finish up the edges with a chisel. The router gets much closer to the edges of the joint, but it still leaves rounded corners. For the final cleanup and fitting, we need the chisel and file.

hand tools

The first of the tails, marked up and ready to be cut. I tried doing this free-hand with the router, but discovered it was too hard to cut a clean, straight line. For the rest, I’ll use the saw to cut along the marked lines before cleaning out the waste with the router. This will also help prevent me from ripping the veneer facing off a large section of the plywood.

marking the tails

Here you can see the surface torn out from one the tails cut before I outlined the tails with the handsaw. Thankfully it’ll be under the seat.

dovetail back side showing grain tearout (oops!)

This one’s neater.

dovetail back side

Our first seats! It’s so satisfying when the joints come together.

first seats joined