Through-dovetails in cabinet construction

[Daniel Grieves]

Hi all, pardon the beginner question here please.

I was planning to use my MLCS through-dovetail jig to attach the top/sides/bottom of the stereo cabinet I'm building. Two questions come to mind before I start routing.

1) The cabinet is going to be 21" deep. The jig is only 15". This means I'll have to make 1 pass, slide the board over, make a second pass. Does anyone have good tips on how to make sure I get things aligned correctly when I slide the board over for the second pass?

2) I'm planning to insert the back into a rabbet in the top/sides/bottom. I figured it would be better to cut the rabbet before the dovetails. Does this make sense?

Thanks in advance, Dan

[Andy Dingley]

Just cut as many as you can, then slide it over. So long as you can actually fit a wide board into the jig, most allow fairly easy multi-pass work like this. Align off the previously cut dovetails, centring them between the fingers.

It may be useful to clamp the boards together, or even to glue them together (with an interleaving paper strip), so that you can move the jig around without disturbing the alignment of the two boards.

Rebate after the dovetails. You need to cut a stopped rebate, or else it will run out into the surfce of the boards. This may be visible in the last half-pins, or even the half-pins and the last tail. After you've cut the tails you can see more easily where to stop it.