Trimming Dovetails with Your Router
George VondriskaDescription
After assembling a dovetail joint and allowing the glue to cure, the next step will be to trim the pins and tails so that they are flush with the sides of the box. There are many ways to accomplish this task. Some woodworkers tackle this with a belt sander or random orbital sander, which can work, but has the potential to round over the corner giving the box an undesirable softened appearance. George has demonstrated how to trim dovetails using a block plane as well, which is a great option if you are comfortable with shearing end grain with this tool. For those of us who prefer a power tool approach, there is another great option to consider, which is to use a flush-trim bit mounted in a hand-held router.
The flush trimming approach to finishing a dovetail joint has a great advantage in the consistency that it delivers, and it provides a quick and relatively simple way to achieve professional looking results without spending a lot of money (Chances are that you probably already have a flush trim bit in your collection).
Precision
A router brings a level of precision and repeatability to this task that is difficult to match with other approaches, as long as you know how to use a router. The flush trim bit ensures that the surfaces are perfectly aligned after the simple procedure is complete.
The Challenge
There is one challenge that needs to be overcome;the protruding pins and tails of a through dovetail joint make it difficult to guide the router smoothly along the surface to complete the flush trim operation. George provides instruction on a simple jig and technique that will make this process go smoothly and deliver great results every time. You’ll want to try this.
A flush trim router bit mounted in a router will provide a good way to clean up the dovetails here and get rid of this projection I have. But we need an extra step, 'cause the router base is gonna bounce along these pins and that's gonna mess everything up. The extra step is pretty easy. I made this board so it can sit there. And the big thing to notice here is that the teeth fit right over the tops of the tails, allowing this scrap to come up close to the end of my board. The router is then going to have a nice flat surface to ride on, instead of being interrupted as it would here. On the bottom, I've already got some chunks of double-faced tape. You can get double-faced tape at woodworking stores. It's gonna work out great for this. And it's nice because with the double-faced tape, then I don't have to worry about clamping this board in place, the clamp could then interfere with the travel or the router, just make everything more complex. Now we are flush trimming, so I'm going to hold the edge of my scrap piece back a little bit from the ends of the tails because those ends are about to get cut off. Push that down. Remember when you set the depth to cut on your router bit to compensate for the idea that you're gonna be on top of this board. So we need to make sure that the flush trim bit is deep enough that it's going to reach down to the carcass side that you're trying to trim to. So let's have a look at our depth of cut there. That looks Smurf-errific. As always, I like to let the router come to a complete stop here before I lift it off. Let's check our work. What's nice about this is that it keeps everything in plane, that's still a nice square corner. Now, when we rotate this and come up and around, I gotta think of where I am here for a second. When I come around to make this cut, we don't have to use that template that we used in the first cut, because now this side is nice and flat. So that tooth jig that I made, we only need one of those. When I make the subsequent cut, the base of the router can ride right on here, and it'll be able to trim those pins off perfectly. So this a much better solution for this than sanding. Block plane's a good way to go, but if you're not comfortable with using a block plane, or you don't own one, that flush trim router bit would do a great job of cleaning those up, provided you use that little shot-made template up here.
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