I am taking a class online and they are using the Woodworker II dovetail blade. Those are back ordered for 5 months so not an option. My other option is to buy a combination saw blade and have the top of the teeth ground down to the angle I want. Dallas Saw will have the machinery to do these cuts in a month, but that is a little long to wait. Does anyone else know where I could get the tops of a saw blade’s teeth ground down to say a 10º angle.
Thanks
-CR
I feel needing the specific saw is kinda missing the point of the class, ask any 70 year old wood worker and they’ll tell you they can cut dovetails with anything that’s got teeth, I mean if your wanting to spend some bucks bob cosmans dovetail saw is kinda the pinnacle of quality
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Thanks but I get it. I am just experimenting and having fun. Also just for clarification I want a dovetail blade for my table saw. I was not specific enough about the kind of saw in the original post.
There are much easier ways to cut dovetails than on a table saw. Is there a reason why you want to use the table saw specifically?
Dovetails are more commonly cut with a router using an inexpensive dovetail bit. We have both in the woodshop. We even have a Leigh Dovetail Jig–arguably the best jig you can buy.
If not the router, the best machine is probably a bandsaw. You should be able to find plenty of videos showing you how to cut dovetails on a bandsaw. Cutting dovetails on a table saw would be way down on the list–especially if you need a specially ground blade to do it.
The most satisfying method is to cut them by hand. It is intimidating at first, but speaking from experience it will take you about as long to figure out how to cut them with a machine and a jig of some kind as it will to learn how to cut them by hand.
I concur with long setup time for machine cut. And you can cut narrower better looking dovetails by hand. To me I like my handmade stuff to look handmade, not like it was made in a factory.
Thanks for all the great advice. Unfortunately I do not have access to the space right now. We are still keeping to ourselves. I will practice making them with my chisels. I just thought I would share the method Matt Kenney’s teaching in his end grain cabinet class below if anybody was interested in looking at it.
Matt has modified it with a better sled and now he tapes the two sides together and cuts them and then the top and bottom together and cuts them. This way you only have to do layout on one end of each set of boards. Really once you have the table saw blade looks pretty easy.
Pekovich also uses a similar method to do his small dovetails like in the excerpt from the article from this months Fine Woodworking below.
