I have made some progress on the dresser. Earlier this week, I got all the drawer parts jointed, planed, and ripped to width. Tonight, I cut them all to length. One thing I am doing different now is using the table saw sled I built. With it, I get much cleaner cuts, I know it is square, and being that it only has one cut line in it, it is easy to measure to.
Now I have a nice stack of 28 boards for 7 drawers not including the bottoms.
Next I orient the parts and mark them. I have many times made two left sides or two right sides :eusa_doh: , so I have learned the hard way to always lay them out. For me, the easiest way to do this is to spread them out and mark each corner with a number for what drawer it is and a letter for which corner on the bottom edge where the dadoes will go for the drawer bottoms.
From here, it is time to dovetail. This is my first time using the 4212, and after using it tonight, I can say it is nowhere close to a Leigh. It does come with the router bits, template adapters and finger assemblies to do HB dovetails, through dovetails, and finger joints. Overall, it is a pretty good jig for the price. I wouldn't rate it as high as FWW did, but it gets the job done.
I spent about an hour and a half the other night making test cuts and getting it set up correctly. It does have some nice features though.
I like the fact that it has Cam locks. They are much quicker and better to me than screw knobs.
And it has setup instructions and hints on the side of it. Additionally, it has scribe lines that are supposed to tell you where to place the finger assembly and a bit height gauge for how deep of a cut to make. IMO, these are just rough references and you have to make adjustments to get things just right. On the negative side, the finger assembly although aluminum has too much flex in it and you can easily push it up with the vertical board. The alignment guides for getting your boards straight is not quite square on my unit so you have to make sure you have your boards aligned correctly.
Once you get your boards in place, cutting them with the router is pretty simple and easy. Unlike other DT jigs I have used, you have no left to right cutting to do, just down the center, but once you do, voila, dovetails.
Overall, the jig does pretty good, but it could stand some tweaking. The angle on the tails is not quite what I am used to, but being that I have been using a Leigh for 10 years, what can I expect.
http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/data/674/medium/dovetail_joint.JPG
I will say they do fit, and should hold up well. The ones on the front of the drawers aren't going to show anyway as I have to put cockbead around all of the drawers per the LOML's specifications.
Now on to cutting the dadoes for the bottoms, sanding, rounding over all the edges, and making cockbead.
