Dovetail Delivery

I'm home for Thanksgiving and this is the perfect time to give my niece the dovetail saw I made for her.

I set up a pine 1x6 and had her practice some straight cuts then some angled cuts, about 10 or 12 of each.  It didn't take long before she got the hang of it.  She didn't always cut right to the line but she was usually parallel to it and always on the waste side.  Now it was time for her first dovetail joint.

I marked out three pins and turned her loose on them.  She did great.  I held the pin board while she marked out the tails with a pencil.  Some of the tail cuts were a little proud of the line but not bad.  Cleaning them up with a chisel wasn't difficult but it did help her understand the advantage of learning to cut to the line.

 

Not bad for a first try.

As I took this photo, I think she was sending a picture of the finished joint to one of her friends. 

Lighting Upgrade

When I first set up my shop, I didn't know much about lighting.  I bought the cheapest florescent shop lights I could find.  Although they did produce light, they were slow starting in cold weather and some of them buzzed like a swarm of angry bees.  I only bought a few at a time, as my perceived budget allowed, and I ended up with several different styles.  Some had decent size reflectors while others had smaller or no reflectors at all.