Why Thin Pins

I've always heard that dovwtail joints with very thin pins are a mark of craftsmanship. I can understand that in that it's hard to make them well. My question is: why would you want to make a joint with thin pins? The joint would be much stronger with evenly spaced pins and tails, wouldn't t it?

Ed Bailen

Reply to
Ed Bailen
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To paraphrase Patrick Leach, "because you can".

Yep. But thin pins are more interesting to look at and look less like they could have been cut by some machine.

Chuck Vance

Reply to
Conan the Librarian

You'll notice that when thin pins are used there's usually more of them and often more concentrated at the top and bottom ot the drawer. (go here for why - all one line so watch line wrap)

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More pins, more common surface area, stronger joint.

There's often, though not always, a very good reason for doing joints a certain way. Folks have been making things out of wood for a very long time. What works well gets passed along, What doesn't gets lost.

charlie b

Reply to
charlie b

If you want to see some spectacular pins, check out Rob Cosman's (LN) houndstooth dovetails. :-)

Reply to
Lowell Holmes

Really thin pins can't be done with a router (the neck of the router bit can only be so narrow). It means that they are hand-made.

If you are cutting by hand, thin is no harder than thick.

If you can't tell otherwise that they were hand-made, I would say "yes" that is a mark carftsmanship.

Really thin pins can't be done with a router (the neck of the router bit can only be so narrow). It means that they are hand-made.

If you are cutting by hand, thin is no harder than thick.

If you can't tell otherwise that they were hand-made, I would say "yes" that is a mark carftsmanship.

Aesthetics. Or to say "hey these are handmade"

Dunno, but for me aesthetics would be more important than naking an otherwise perfectly strong joint marginally stronger.

-Steve

Reply to
Stephen M

I believe that the reason most woodworkers make thin pins is to show that they were not made with a variable spacing jig, like the Leigh jig. I have heard that pitch many times.

Bob

Reply to
RWM

There comes a point where stronger becomes a meaningless term. That point is where the joint will do the job without failure under normal conditions/use.

That is to say that if you want to make large evenly spaced dovetails more power to you but it doesn't mean that it will out live a similar item made with small thin dovetails.

Another example would be X brand glue advertising that the joint it makes will be stronger then the wood and Y brand claiming it is stronger then brand X. If, in fact, brand X is stronger then the wood. Ho hum, so what if brand Y is even stronger.

Reply to
Mike G

To me its a hallmark of craftsmanship for the thinner pins. Since the thinner pins have been around alot longer than any router or jig its obvious earlier woodworkers didn't make them to "prove" they weren't cut with a machine or jig. They did it as a way of showing abilities. Nowadays I guess that would be some folks reason for thin pins but it surely wasn't the reason for the trend in the beginning. Besides it just looks really cool to my eyes.

Jim

Reply to
James D. Kountz

Reply to
James D. Kountz

Perfect!

I think this is often true today, but thin pins have been around longer than machine tools.

There's another reason in blind dovetails: less end grain is shown.

Also, I don't know if there was any ancient reasoning to this effect, but thin pins, especially irregularly-spaced ones, create a less "interrupted" look in both the face and end views of the piece. Just my ha'penceworth.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Wilson

Rodney Myrvaagnes J36 Gjo/a

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry. - Richard Dawkins, "Viruses of the Mind"

Reply to
Rodney Myrvaagnes

Actually it was even more then that. Developed and coming into common use during the eighteenth century it marked the end of the heavy blocky look of the Jacobean period. A look necessitated by the common use of nailed butt and M & T joints. It allowed for the more refined delicate look of the William and Mary period and the development of the various period furniture styles from then on. .

Reply to
Mike G

Yes introduced. Are you saying you have never seen an 18th century or older piece with wider pins? I have seen both myself many times. And besides that by introduced I only meant, whenever it became a common practice. You know what I mean? I wasnt trying to actually "date" the technique just needed a word and "introduced" popped in my head. Forgive me.

Jim

Reply to
James D. Kountz

Yes, I really am saying that. I am ready to be educated. I have examined a lot of old pieces in the Met, Winterthur, and the MFA Boston, and I don't remember any wide pins.

But I am getting old and dotty, and have never been infallible.

Rodney Myrvaagnes J36 Gjo/a

"If Brecht had directed 'Waiting for Godot,' he would have hung a large sign at the back of the stage reading 'He's not going to come, you know. ' " -- Terry Eagleton

Reply to
Rodney Myrvaagnes

Exactly it tells the observer they are handcut, mjh

Reply to
Mike Hide

I think the idea of them looking more delicate is a good point. I know when I first started chopping dovetails I tended to lay them out at about a 3x1 ratio. Now they look much too blocky to me.

Somewhere along the way I started doing layout by taking a 1/8" or

1/4" chisel (depending on the size of the piece) and using that as my starting point for pin width. From there I'd pick a width that was somewhere around 4-5 times more than pin width and see how many tails that would give me (remembering that you have one more pin than tails).

Sometimes I'll even go ahead and lay them out on graph paper just to be sure I like the look. (Also, FWIW, it is much easier to do this layout in metric; 1/8"'s and 1/16"'s, etc. don't divide as easily as multiples of 10.)

I also remember reading someone recommend that you always have an odd number of tails (presumably to add interest by not having the piece broken up visually right at the midpoint line). I've never felt the need to do this religiously, but it does seem to have some merit.

Chuck Vance

Reply to
Conan the Librarian

On 9 Apr 2004 05:01:00 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@swt.edu (Conan the Librarian) wrote: snip...

lesse....

10 is divisible by 1, 2 and 5. that's it. 12 (feet) are divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 16 (inches, depending on your rule) are divisible by 1, 2, 4 and 8

to me the only advantage to metric is it works better on my cheapo calculator. it's certainly not inherently "better"

Reply to
bridger

I'm not so sure I buy any "this way is stronger than that way" arguments when it comes to dovetail joints. Except for extreme examples, I'd be surprised if dovetails laid out one way would be more beneficial from a strength standpoint than dovetails laid out some other way.

I think it really does come down to aesthetics. Here it really is interesting, I think. Today some value handcut dovetails (thin or not) over machine cut dovetails, though I expect only if it were somehow clear they were, indeed, handcut not machine cut. One way to demonstrate this is to handcut dovetails in such a way that no readily available machine could duplicate the layout.

But imagine yourself travelling back in time three or four hundred years with a dovetailing machine. I bet your machine cut dovetails would be all the rage. After all, any monarch could get stuff with excellent handcut dovetails. But how many could get stuff with your machine cut dovetails? In other words, it's not the handmade craftsmanship that is so valuable, per se; it's the relative rarity/novelty which is valued. Nowadays, handcut dovetails have a corner on the rare/novelty market, which make them more "aesthetically pleasing" to some (most? all?).

And where do those funky machine cut joints fit into the picture? I'm thinking of the "bears ears" templates and the like which are available for the Leigh jig, here. Those are certainly more novel/rare than typical dovetails. Are they more or less aesthetically pleasing? Certainly some get excited by them, though I'm sure there are some on this very newsgroup who don't think they're all that great.

Reply to
Jeffrey Thunder

The hand cut variety may not be as rare as you think. There certainly are a lot of dovetail saws being sold. Just check out the LN booths at the wood shows. I have a Leigh Jig that I seldom use, but I keep it because I never know when I might want it. Learning to make good hand cut dovetails was a quest for me, and I just prefer them. I vary the widths of the pins as the mood dictates. If I'm doing a some Shaker Shelves, wide tails would be used. Shadow boxes or drawers would call for finer tails. A Shaker candle box gets something in between.

My current quest is hand cut through tenons.

:-)

Reply to
Lowell Holmes

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