# Portercable Dovetail Jig - A better way to set depth



## reganroyce35 (Apr 5, 2013)

After spending many many hours tinkering with the porter cable 4210 dovetail jig to get my through dovetails to line up properly, I came up with an idea that I want to verify here... 

The jig comes with various depth guides to help with the cuts and that is what I have been using. However, things always seemed to be off. 

Theoretically, for through dovetails shouldn't the depth of both the dovetail bit and the straight bit always be the exact same as the thickness of the board NOT being cut???? For example if my drawer front is 3/4 and the sides are 1/2, if I am cutting into the 3/4 board I need the depth to be 1/2 so the sides will link in properly?

I don't know why I would need to mess around with all of the other settings on the jig as long as the bits were set to be the exact width of the board. Also what's really frustrating, if that concept is true, then why wouldn't the instruction manual just say that?!?! It has all kinds of information about setting up the jig but never mentions to set the bit based on board width.

Anyway, can someone let me know if that theory will always work out (i.e. 3/4 wood, 1/2 wood, etc) or if I'm making this too simple.

Thanks!!!


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## theartist09 (Feb 9, 2011)

*porter cable 4210 dovetail jig*

I've got that same jig and it seems that i'm having that problem also. The book tells you alot of things but it seems some important things are left out.

Jim


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## Knot2square (Jul 11, 2015)

Woodworkers Guild of America has some very good videos on setting up the PC 4210 jig for both through and half blind dovetails. George (man in videos) is straight forward and explains everything plain enough for us simple folks. Worked for me. You still have to make a few practice cuts, but it saved me alot of time and headache, not to mention wood.


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## WR1944 (Mar 29, 2011)

I have the same jig and I found the manual a little scattered. I made my own step by step manual for the various forms of dove tails.
One thing I found out was that the depth adjustment brackets were not exactly square. So the round stop was slightly tilted. So depending on the orientation of your router bit the depth could differ about 0.5 mm. And that is too much for dove tails. By a little bending I could straighten this out and had a better fit.


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