So, last evening, I got tired of watching my favorite baseball team lose to a bunch of September call up rookies, and I decided that I was going to try to hand cut some dovetails, just for practice, and maybe to justify some of that rash expenditure of hard earned cash on some really nice chisels.
I dragged the Tage Frid reference off of the shelf, and went through it all again, looking at the pictures closely. Found an offcut of soft maple in the wood rack, and cleaned up the ends and edges, nice and square, Normite style. Laid out the pins like Tage says, using the old-style Veritas saddle DT marker that followed me home one day from the toy store.
And proceeded to take 90 minutes to cut 4 pins! Frank does this in 6 minutes? Haven't even gotten to the tails, yet!
So here's the part about nothing new under the sun:
Looking in Google this afternoon for some ideas on chisel and handplane storage, I run across an old post from a Neander Newbie, from around 1998. He's going on and on about cutting dovetails in soft maple, and how it's a lot more challenging, but more satisfying, than poplar or pine, etc.
Some fellow by the name of Chuck Vance.
That's why Google is such a treasure trove. And that's why the aged ones often send the new accolytes to DAGS. There just isn't much new under the sun.
Reflecting back on it, the recent thread between Chuck and Larry on dovetail saws was likely what got me to thinking about DTs anyway.
Patriarch, who still needs to figure out the best replacement for storing planes and chisels in a Craftsman mechanics' rolling tool cabinet...