Hey everyone I wanted to share a dovetail box that I was working on I am getting into cutting drawers for cabinets I would like feedback on how you think it would work out for that purpose
thanks
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yeah I dont like them either and yeah the only way to ge rid of them when milling on the face is to round the edges of the male dovetail pins
but the way I did that with 1 tool a 1/8" compression they are required
and yeah lol that box is extremely tight fit rubber mallet is required to put it together
thats how I created the dovetail box is the gadget in v-carve pro
I will have to mess with it and see if I can add a fillet to the pins and slots which would make a rounded dovetail and thus no dogbone deals
and no there are other solutions out there for flat cutting on the cnc but are you meaning with 100% square corners or will rounded dovetails work?
top job, if its hammer tight then its awesome and once its glued up, more so,
. more pics as the job goes on please, very interested in this dovetail cnc thing,
Awesome! Not too tight or you’ll glue starve the joint. Make dry-fit problematic. Should be able to wiggle in and out. Also, make sure the dovetail is in the correct orientation/direction to oppose the tensile forces of the drawer slamming shut a million times. Soft-close slides help too.
well really as sturdy as this box is you really dont even need to use glue
in the long term I would like to see if that statement holds up
If one of the design criteria is flat-packable, then go for it!
I notice that the v-carve gadget does not allow you put any clearence in the joints when it generates the gcode
I agree that would look cool but not sure it would be feasible in a production environment to me that seems like it would take alot of time?
true true and yeah I dont like doing the hobby craft stuff I am always after how to make 1 item and then how to make 1000 of them quickly
but your right thats why I like flat pack joints they are pretty celebrated as the standard
here Is an image of the vortex system in use
That is a bit on the pricey side at $750 for a kit.
thats what I am saying vortex is expensive for sure but if it works it will pay itself off pretty quickly
That is very true.
Whow. 
…I mean it looks great! Don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure it looks $750 great.
Dovetail jigs are less then $250. And with practice much faster then CNC.
to tell you the truth those i am always leaning towards the more expensive tools as I gain more experience in the cnc machines
I have no problem paying 100.00 or more for a coated compression spiral if it gets the job done without any problems I just work all those costs into job
800.00 seems expensive but if your have the work to back it up then its a drop in the bucket for sure
Getting rid of the dogbones:
To do it with 3D carving: Cut the entire project using an 1/8 ballnose endmill. You’ll be left with a small radius in each inside corner - which is easily removed by quickly cleaning it up with a chisel.
To do it with 2D carving, you have to have a vertical setup. You can cut both tails and pins separately with a flat endmill, or cut both at the same time with a dovetail bit.
Alternatively, you can make miter joints and then strengthen them by adding splines. Very attractive and really easy to do.
This box was done using 3d toolpaths using a flat end mill at a 30 degree angle
I am not 2 sure that a chisel would work on the plywood as it would just chip out right and well the time it would take to do all of that on each panel being cut
and yeah for panel processing I just do think its worth setting the machine up for vertical machining as you would have to load each piece in 1 at a time and basically baby sit the machine I would like to just load a piece of plywood and come back when it has cut all of them out
and do you have an example of that joint you described with the miters?
If you had a vertical setup, you could either do them separate with a flat end mill or with a dovetail bit you cut both the tails and pins at the same time by lining both pieces up perpendicular to each other.
This is how they do it with hand held router jigs. You then just flip the pieces over and fit them together. What I was suggesting was lining both like that on a vertical cnc setup, and just using the cnc to cut both.
http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Route-Dovetails.jpg
About your current project: You shouldn’t have to angle your end mill or tilt your piece if your including dog bones.If you’re already using 3D toolpaths, just switch to ball nose and cut the whole piece out at 90°.
Miter splines are simply a 45° miter joint with slots cut into the corners to accept spline reinforcements. The reason they do this is because endgrain to endgrain glueups are not particularly strong or have much surface area. By addind in long grain splines you strength the joint significantly.
They can be any shape you want, including dovetail. Which could give you a smiliar look to handcut/through dovetails. There are a lot of really great table saw jigs and hand tool tutorials on youtube for making them. If you set up a table saw jig, it literally only takes a couple minutes.