# Leigh super 12 dovetail jig problem



## iwood50 (Jan 14, 2013)

The tails and pins are not coming out flush when I'm done routing. They are not long enough. I set my wheel marking gauge to the thickness of each board, scribed a line, set the bit depth to the scribed line and when the routing is done they are a little short. What am I doing wrong?
Todd


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## RogerInColorado (Jan 16, 2013)

Same thing happens to me on my Porter Cable jig. I just adjust everything so that the joints stand a little proud (by "feel" not measurement) and then I can plane or sand them flush. Whenever I'm doing dovetails I make lots of spare stock the same thickness and width so I can have lots available during set up. I can't get to setup perfection without that kind of material / time investment. It's way less stressful.


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## iwood50 (Jan 14, 2013)

:thumbsup: I finally found peace with the Leigh Dovetail jig; with the router sitting on the motor base, router bit facing the sky, leigh template on top of the base, the opposing piece of wood on top of the template, the height of the router bit was set to the thickness of board using the trusty fingernail.
I made a test box using 1/2" red oak and as long as I set the router bit to the thickness of the pin board and then routed the tail board; and then the thickness of the tail board and routed the pin board all was correct.
If I used the pin board to gauge the router bit and then cut the pins and did the same to the tail board,(to my mind a 1/2" thick board is a 1/2" thick board and it shouldn't matter which board was used to gauge the router bit) nothing came out correct. In my test cut the pins and tails always were to long (or proud).

With that being said I wanted the pins and tails to be flush. I'm building a guitar amplifier box for a customer. The _customer_ wants the interior measurements to be an exact.


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## RogerInColorado (Jan 16, 2013)

A half inch is a half inch unless one of the boards is 0.510 and the other is 0.49. I use a cheap ($30) dial caliper to measure thicknesses and minimize surprises.


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