How do you keep your plywood from chipping when you do the dovetails? I've been trying to do dovetails on my baltic birch drawers and I keep getting splinters and chips in the wood.
Plywood is prone to blowout when routing dovetails, particularly the tail boards, since you're routing across the plies. Minor chipping near the tips of some of the tails is basically inevitable, but here are some things to try to keep the pieces servicable: 1) Use sharp/clean bits. (After cutting many pin boards in baltic birch, the bit will become scalloped and covered in glue resin and pitch). 2) Set the router to the fastest speed that won't burn the bit. I set mine at "3" or "4". 3) Use a slow and steady feed rate 4) Back up the "outfeed" side of the stock with a sacrificial board. Make sure the support board is butted tightly to the back side of the tail board. You may need to put a clean edge on the support board every so often to maintain the zero-clearance effect. 5) I always climb-cut the tail boards in plywood. Start with one long pass from right to left to define the base (shoulder) of the tail. Then, work right to left, in and out between the tails. Again, slow and steady feed rate, and keep a firm grip on the router! You may still get a bit of blowout on the part of the tails that gets buried in the adjoining board, but the show side should stay pretty crisp. 6) Keep the router at a consistent relative rotation to the workpiece. I try to keep the handles parallel to the dovetail jig. This will keep concentricity errors in the router/bushing from causing the bit to grab, not to mention helping maintain a consistent fit. I hope this helps!
Beautiful! 56 drawers is an incredible amount.
How do you keep your plywood from chipping when you do the dovetails? I've been trying to do dovetails on my baltic birch drawers and I keep getting splinters and chips in the wood.
Plywood is prone to blowout when routing dovetails, particularly the tail boards, since you're routing across the plies. Minor chipping near the tips of some of the tails is basically inevitable, but here are some things to try to keep the pieces servicable:
1) Use sharp/clean bits. (After cutting many pin boards in baltic birch, the bit will become scalloped and covered in glue resin and pitch).
2) Set the router to the fastest speed that won't burn the bit. I set mine at "3" or "4".
3) Use a slow and steady feed rate
4) Back up the "outfeed" side of the stock with a sacrificial board. Make sure the support board is butted tightly to the back side of the tail board. You may need to put a clean edge on the support board every so often to maintain the zero-clearance effect.
5) I always climb-cut the tail boards in plywood. Start with one long pass from right to left to define the base (shoulder) of the tail. Then, work right to left, in and out between the tails. Again, slow and steady feed rate, and keep a firm grip on the router! You may still get a bit of blowout on the part of the tails that gets buried in the adjoining board, but the show side should stay pretty crisp.
6) Keep the router at a consistent relative rotation to the workpiece. I try to keep the handles parallel to the dovetail jig. This will keep concentricity errors in the router/bushing from causing the bit to grab, not to mention helping maintain a consistent fit.
I hope this helps!
@ thank you so much!! I’ll try all of those tips.