# dove tail blow out in pine



## brianmiddleton (Dec 28, 2008)

HELP! Iam making two hope chests for my to daughters an I cannot seem to get the @%*&%@ doevtail bit on my router to stop blowing out the edges on the pine boards I am using


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## curiousgeorge (Nov 6, 2006)

Are you using a backer board on the cuts?


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## brianmiddleton (Dec 28, 2008)

yes it usually is tearing out on the right hand side of th cut. I dont think Iam feeding to fast?


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## Drew Eckhardt (Aug 2, 2008)

brianmiddleton said:


> yes it usually is tearing out on the right hand side of th cut. I dont think Iam feeding to fast?


Are you cutting the center slot with a straight bit first?

Have you tried using a fresh piece of wood to back each cut?


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## rwyoung (Aug 3, 2008)

I just got a PC 4212 and spent the afternoon playing with it. And I searched around and found a few on-line movies and demos of the same and similar jig.

Here are a few things I learned:

1) When cutting the pins, make a back-route across the front of the area to be voided. Maybe 1/2 to 1/4 the bit depth is enough. This stops blowout on one side. For the other side you should have a backer piece for soft stuff like pine or plywood. Some 1/4" hardboard ought to work pretty well.
2) For both pins and tails, get out your marking gauge and score the workpieces. This will be a pretty obvious line in pine so either learn to love seeing it even in a finished piece or plan on hitting the sides pretty hard with a belt sander.

I tried the scoring trick and it worked like a charm. Ran the score on all four sides (two faces, two short sides) of some cheapo #2 pine that I was practicing with. That plus a quick backroute stoped the blowout in my test pieces. I didn't add a backer board to my work piece. But I did have a sacrifical piece in the top of the jig to help me align the vertical work piece. I was only doing through dove tails today.

I have a brass marking guage and its little cutter wheel can leave a pretty deep score line. You could probably get away with a small square and new Xacto blade. I think it is important that you have the score line as close to dead on the cutting depth as possible.


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