Showerthought: Hand-cut dovetails vs router jigs - the router wins every time for production work

Spent 2 years doing everything by hand until a buddy with a Leigh jig showed me his output last Tuesday, and I just can't justify the extra 4 hours per drawer for something customers never notice. Am I missing something or has anyone else made the swap?

3 comments

3 Comments

eric3592mo ago

My buddy Mike spent 3 months learning hand-cut dovetails for a kitchen remodel he was doing for his sister. Built all 12 drawers by hand, proud as could be. Three weeks after install she called him saying two of the drawer fronts were pulling loose. Turned out his pins were too thin and snapped under the weight of her cast iron pots. He rebuilt those four drawers with a router jig in one afternoon and they're still solid 5 years later. He still does hand-cut stuff for his own projects but never for paying customers anymore.

tara3452mo ago

So he spent all that time getting good at cutting dovetails by hand, but apparently never learned how to size them properly for the job? That's the part that gets me. Three months of practice and he's still making pins that snap under kitchen drawer weight? I get that hand-cut dovetails look beautiful, but if you can't figure out the basic engineering of how thick the pins need to be for a drawer full of cast iron, what's the point? Did he ever figure out what the right pin size should have been for that kind of load, or did he just switch to the router jig and never look back?

phoenix84523d ago

Notice this same pattern everywhere once you start looking for it. People go all in on learning some traditional skill or fancy technique without ever stopping to think about whether it actually solves the real problem. I've seen guys spend months perfecting hand-cut joinery while ignoring basic load calculations, same as I've watched people obsess over the perfect sourdough starter but never learn how to tell when their dough is actually overproofed. The fundamentals of engineering or cooking or whatever always matter more than the flashy technique you're proud of.