On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:16:36 -0500, Australopithecus scobis wrote:

Greetings,
Just got Ian Kirby's "The Complete Dovetail" from interlibrary loan.
In the description of the double lap dovetail he says to cut the
rabbet with a rabbet plane. This provoked my question: Why plane out the
rabbet; why not cut it with a saw, and then trim with a plane? Seems that
planing the whole thing is a lot of work with ugly tear-out risks.

Key word in the paragraph is "rabbet plane." A rabbet plane has two extra
blades one on each side called nickers that take a veritical slice through
the wood, this prety much prevents any tear out along the edges of the
rabbet.

The other thing to remember is that there are usually several different
ways of getting any woodworking task done. So if you want to hog out the
bulk of the wood with a saw, and then fine tune the result with a plane,
do it that way. There is no law preventing you from doing it the way you
want to.

BTW I've got the book in my shop, when I find the floor again I'm going to
take a swing at cutting some dove tails.

Tigger