Woodworkers Might Find This Interesting

Dave R

I think I understand the parameters. Thank you. I'll give it a try.

Edited:

This is indeed a very interesting plugin, Jean-Franco. I see that it divides the drawer height equally and makes tail and pin width equal. It is very fast for making a drawer box with half-blind dovetails on the front. I see a lot of potential for this.

Personally I don't care for dovetail joints that look like the teeth of a zipper. (what's the French word for that?) I don't cut dovetails that way even when cutting with a router but that's certainly just a preference. With the way the plugin lays out the dovetails, it would definitely be hard to use the result as a template for a router since you could end up with unusual sizes. I did a drawer box that is 5" deep and got pins and tails that are 23/32" wide. In a 6" deep drawer they are 9/16" wide.

Dave R

Here's an updated list then.

Component Name
Drawer Length
Drawer Width
Drawer Height
Drawer Side Thickness
Drawer Front thickness
Drawer Back Thickness
Dovetail Slope
Half Blind Tail Length (This one needs some help. It's not the right words. This value is what's left between the edge of the tail and the front edge of the drawer front.)
Bottom Thickness
Groove Depth

Jean-Franco

Hi Dave,

@unknownuser said:

I see that it divides the drawer height equally and makes tail and pin width equal. It is very fast for making a drawer box with half-blind dovetails on the front.

Yes your explanation is correct.

Tim's plugin approach is very interesting and I've informed my friend about this.
He might be interested to have another go with his plugin. But I know he's very busy at the moment. We planned months ago to have an "english version" but he asked me to wait because he wanted to rewrite some parts of the script, including some new features as selecting the pins number and additional tests avoiding invalid entries.

So your yesterday's post decided me to share this interesting tool.
I hope he will have another go.

The translation is finished. I've two remaining problems.
1/- I don't know how to convert the default values in imperial units directly in the script. All my tests failed ! I've asked the author but maybe someone here could help ?
2/-
@unknownuser said:

Half Blind Tail Length (This one needs some help. It's not the right words. This value is what's left between the edge of the tail and the front edge of the drawer front.)

Would the terms "Lap Thickness" or "Half Blind Lap Thickness" be understandable ?
In France "épaisseur de recouvrement" is the usual term to define this part.

Dave R

Jean-Franco,

I think Lap Thickness could be usable for that label.

Hopefully your friend of someone else will be able to make the needed adjustments.

The plugin does seem to handle imperial dimensions just fine. It won't handle decimal inches, though. If your friend works on the script more, it might also be nice to provide some control over how far up from the bottom edge, the groove for the bottom is placed. It would also be nice if the back end of the sides had a taper instead of a half-socket. If you were making the drawer in wood, you wouldn't cut a half socket there.

Jean-Franco

Dave,

@unknownuser said:

I think Lap Thickness could be usable for that label.

taken

@unknownuser said:

If your friend works on the script more, it might also be nice to provide some control over how far up from the bottom edge, the groove for the bottom is placed.

For now the groove is always centered in the last pin. It can be changed.

@unknownuser said:

It would also be nice if the back end of the sides had a taper instead of a half-socket. If you were making the drawer in wood, you wouldn't cut a half socket there.

You're right and this problem was on the list of improvements. If you look at the video on the mentionned link, you can see the author correcting this by hand.

@unknownuser said:

The plugin does seem to handle imperial dimensions just fine. It won't handle decimal inches, though.

Ok, for now it will remain as it is.

Dave R

That'll work fine.

Cheers,

Dave

Jean-Franco

Here we go with the english version:
http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/technaulogis/exemple_5.php

Some additional things:

1/- don't enter "0" for the bottom thickness >>> bug
2/- if you enter "0" for the dovetail slope, you will get straight pins.
3/- it works with imperial units, (Dave has tested it)

Yvon the author is working on a new version with some improvements for the interface and some other things like the possibility to chose the number of pins and also a freely adjustable groove position from the bottom.

When you start the script the dialog box will look like this.
The default values are mm converted into inches.
Just enter your own values. By default the component name is "Drawer".
If you look at the component window you will see that side, front, back are also components you can reuse. But unfortunately some dummy components used during the creation process are not erased. So just "purge unused" to get rid of them.

Enjoy it and thanks to Yvon !

Jean-Franco

Hello Dave,
thanks for pointing us to this new plugin.
I'm using another one you can find in version v1-08.
The author developped it after I asked him on a french woodworkers SketchUp forum.
I've helped testing with some other potential users and it works correctly. There are some minor problems but the author is still rewriting it completely. Then he will fix the last bugs.

After selecting all parameters, the drawer is created with only one clic as a component!
You cannot define the number of tails. The plugin calculates it depending on the angle and the width of the board. It will be modified in a future version.

You can download it here.
http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/technaulogis/exemple_5.php

I tried to translate the dialog box parameters.

[/attachment][attachment=1:2k5q0px6]QArondes_parametres.jpg[attachment=0]QArondes_parametres_explications.jpg[/attachment:2k5q0px6]

Jean-Franco

Thanks Dave for helping me.
In fact the thickness of the drawer front and sides are in this case both 16 mm.
So we have to correct the names in dialog box.
"Pin width" = side thickness
"Tail width" = front thickness

This plugin is effectively not working as yours.
"Tail depth" = drawer front thickness. If you want half blind dovetails you have to select "ep.recouvrement" 4 mm in my example. If "0" means normal through dovetails.
"Pin width" can not be defined. It's calculated from slope and Overall lenght.

@unknownuser said:

For example I would prefer to specify the width of the pins and the number of pins and let the tail width be calculated. For dovetails cut by a router, the pin width is determined by the dovetail bit and the tail width is secondary

I understand your point but that's not the way this plugin has been defined. These dovetails are thought to be cut manually and not with a router. In a future version it's planed to chose freely the number of pins. But it's not in my hands I'm not a Ruby coder, unfortunately

Sawduster

Not to change the subject, but concerning the rb in the original post, I followed the links to the fella's blog, then the link to where the rb was stored and it was a real PITA to get it to download using Firefox. I did finally get it downloaded and it works great. Thanks for the tutorial on it, Dave.

Dave R

Sorry Jerry. Unfortunately I haven't any control over where people choose to upload files.

Sawduster

Heck, I've go a bunch of web space as well as bandwidth available on my website and no ads or popups or such and I'd be willing to host good stuff like that rather than have folks risk all sorts of adbots and such from those "free" hosting sites.

dedmin

Just used the Drawer plugin - it works GREAT!!! THANKS!!!!