Took me 4 years to figure out my blade height was killing my dovetails

I was fighting tearout on half my through dovetails and blaming the wood, then a guy at a Woodcraft in Nashville watched me cut one and asked why my blade was set a full 1/8 inch above the baseline. Has anyone else been making some stupid simple mistake that took years to catch?

3 comments

3 Comments

hayden_nelson853d ago

Done that with my table saw blade height on dados. Felt like an idiot.

elliot_taylor3d ago

Felt like an idiot" is about the nicest way to put it, @hayden_nelson85. I was setting up a dado stack once and had the blade cranked up way too high. Thought the motor was dying when it started screaming. Turned out I just forgot to lower it back down. Felt like a real genius for a solid 10 minutes there.

patriciah512d ago

Anybody ever think about how the whole "right height" thing changes depending on your sharpening? I was chasing the same problem with my dovetails for years, thought it was my technique or the wood. Then I switched to a steeper bevel on my chisels and suddenly the same blade height worked perfectly. The factory bevels are usually too shallow for dovetail work, so your blade sits too high just to get through the cut. Might be worth trying a 30 degree instead of 25 if you havent already.