On Tuesday, June 18, 2013 6:23:48 PM UTC-5, Len wrote:
I am making lots of drawers using an Akeda dovetail jig. They are

half blind and the wood is 3/4" baltic birch for the front and back

and 1/2" for the sides.



I have made some sample cuts to get the dept of cut adjustment correct.

The current adjustment yields a comfortably tight joint with complete

contact between the pins and tails. However, there is a uniform gap

of about 1/16" between the bottom of the tails on the sides of the drawer

and the pins on the front face of the drawer.



At first I thought some part of a wood layer in the baltic birch had chipped

out during the process of cutting the pins. However, that appears not to be the case; it has a nice smooth surface formed by the router.



Anybody had this problem with the Akeda?



Len



YES! I did eventually solve it. Apparently, it is a common problem with the Akeda Jig. I called their support number and they sent me a pdf file two types of gaps that could be occuring. I picked #2 and he described the solution over the phone.

SOLUTION: The drawers I was making had .5 inch thick sides and .75 inch front and back. When cutting the tails, I put the vertical .5 inch board in the jig to be cut. My method was to push it up unit it hit the plastic routing guides and then locked it in place. I then put a .75 inch thick scrap into the horizontal position and pushed it up to touch the back of the side piece. This board is sacrificial and is used to prevent tearout on the vertical board. The criterion for a good joint is not that the top of the vertical board touch the guides, but that the top must be flush with the top of the backer board. You would think that the plastic guides would automatically achieve this, but it doesn't. I needed to push the vertical board upward (really hard)against the plastic guides to get to the flush position. After that it worked fine - but I had already finished making the joints.

I think that Akeda could make the guides a bit thinner (so the vertical board did not touch them) and tell you the criterion is to get the boards flush, not to touch the bottom of the guides.

A hard lesson to learn!

Len