Leigh Dovetail Jigs: New Design, Affordably Priced

[NuWaveDave]

From Popular Woodworking . . .

[Upscale]

'll be waiting for someone to compare the practicality of their new 18" and the 24" D4R.

[Leon]

> I'll be waiting for someone to compare the practicality of their new 18" > and

;~) Sitting happy with the fact that I paid less than $300 for my New 24" Leigh Jig a few years back.

[Charley]

From what I can tell, Leigh's new dovetail jigs are similar in design to their present D1600. The main design difference between the D4R and these other jigs is that the D4R's pin/tail guides are a split type and all of these others including the D1600 use a non-split type of guide. With this design you can change the position of the pins in your joint, but not the width of each pin. It looks like they're just providing the D1600 design in several new widths.

[RayV]

Seems good but it looks like after buying the jig and the bit set it would be $288 plus tax & shipping for the 12".

this to the $149 it cost me to have PC 4212 delivered to my house including the bits I don't think they are going to gain much in market share.

[charlieb]

Don't know when Leigh did it, but adding the front support fixes one of the problems with the earlier Leigh DT Jig - no "front" support for the router. Doesn't take much of a tilt when routing pins or tails to reduce the potential accuracy of the jig.

Still not sure why you'd NEED a dovetail jig with a capacity of

24". Boards much over a foot are getting harder and harder to find - and pay for. Since you're going to have to glue up for any width beyond 12" why not cut the dovetails BEFORE the glue up?

But it's nice that Leigh is making smaller, less expensive versions of their flagship product.

charlie b

[CW]

Why don't you try that and get back to us. We'll wait.

[Upscale]

What about edge gluing a bunch of boards together and then dovetailing glued panels together? Of course, with the cost of any solid wood these days, even edge gluing enough pieces to form a wide solid wood panel is getting excessively expensive too.

[B A R R Y]

I use mine for dual setups.

[Eddie Munster]

[charlieb]

Do I take it you mean - "That's not possible." - or "You can get close but will have to do some tweeking to get things to fit." - or - "I want to see if someone else knows how to do it - and will explain how so I can follow their instructions."?

I like solving woodworking puzzles and I've got the AKEDA dovetail jig which will do up to 16th inch widths - which is fine for drawers and bookshelf units or upper kitchen cabinets where you might want to show off the joinery - on the ends of pieces that show. For lower kitchen cabinets the carcase is seldom solid wood so cutting dovetails in ply seems a waste of time and effort. I guess if you were doing a blanket chest having a 24" capacity would be nice. For places that you almost have to use dovetails - like on the apron of a woodworking bench for example

- none of the jigs will handle 2" or 3" thick stock since their depth of cut is limited by the dovetail router bit.

Other than a tall or wide "Six Board" box, I can't think of a need to do dovetails in parts wider than 16" - can you?

Don't get me wrong. I've got a few machines that I needed for one or two projects and should probably sold because their just taking up shop space - a General Intl 75-0750M chisel and bit mortiser - the one with the tilting head and the XY table. Needed it when building my workbench. But I don't see any projects on my To Do List that needs that capacity. I've gotten into Loose/Floating Tenon M&T joints and the Festool DOMINO will do all the furniture sized M&T stuff I need. As for dovetails, what the AKEDA won't handle, the JoinTech Cabinet Maker System on my router table will. If you need the Leigh 24" jig - well more power to you.

charlie b

[Chris Friesen]

This might clasify as your "six board box", but aren't classic blanket/hope chests traditionally dovetailed? I've certainly seen those taller than 16".

Chris