Project - "Making a Blanket Chest using the New Jessem router table and the Akeda Dovetail Jig"

This week, I show Beth how I created the guide blocks to help her even out the dovetail spacing across the adjoining boards.    But, two things went wrong. In the back ground, notice the pins I had cut as part of the test. They look great, but are on the long sides rather than on the ends. They should have been tails. The blanket chest will now be 3/4" shorter.    The other"wrong" is that Beth and I had placed the fingers approximately every couple of inches. For making pretty corners, that works. The Akeda Jig matches up the mating pieces no matter where you place them. The problem came when the clever gauge works on some but not the others.
	So we looked closely at the first corner and decided that 1 3/4" width spacing would look the way we wanted. Beth uses a ruler to redraw the midpoints. The Akeda guide bar accepts the fingers in 1/8" increments so making these marks will allow her to set the fingers exactly.    By the way, the fingers mount very easily, once you understand the method. Here it is in a nutshell. You locate the finger's mid-point mark just to the right of where you want to place it and then lift up and to the left. This way it will pop into the next slot. Since the slots are every 1/8", the finger placing can be very exact.
Beth has cut a small sample piece with the new settings so that she can make a new guide.
	At the router table, she carefully marks the center point between two new tails and then marks the centers of the tails, themselves.
With the saw off, she very carefully lines up the fence so that the blade will cut to the left of the line — she wants to leave the line. She can always cut a hair more off, but not put it back on.    Beth found a better method to make this setting. She found the the top of the tail is 1/4" wide and the blade 1/8". So if she set the fence with the blade touching the left hand side of the tail, the setting would be correct.
	With the earlier tries in the background, Beth marks the two that are the "final" guides.
It is a good fit, and the pins are halved, so Beth should be able to use this for aligning the joint later on.
	This close-up shows the marks that Beth made with the square at each center mark. As before, she can see the marks easier by peering over the router for the cutting of the tails. The arrow shows the line she is currently routing — the router has a screw at that point which makes alignment even easier.
Beth inspects the sides with the new tails. They all look good, so it is time to make the pins in the ends.