I like both, but each has its own application. The inlaid dovetail, to me, appears to be for a more high-end application, elegant furniture. The splined application, while just as beautiful, would be used for daily use furniture - a blanket chest, child's toy box, etc. Either way, they both look great and demonstrate a high level of craftsmanship. Nice work Rick.
My first vote would be for the spline inlay, reason being it would be an sneaky way to effective to extend the length of a piece of timber if you "goofed" up and really needed to use it. The attractiveness of the inlay is vote two as its much the same as a woman, it doesnt really serve any purpose but generates a lot of work but definitely looks good. ...snicker snort!
Looks like most here are for Inlaid Dovetails. I agree with Oldtool's comments. Each type have their place and it depends what you are going to do with them.
Hah! Yes I suppose it did, promo photo I have the jig but never tried the variety of "fancy" joints, only the basic dovetails. Setup is reasonably quick for regular DTs, at least I can do it faster that my Leigh jig (probably based on how often I've done each).
Fundamentally it is just doing a regular DT on the main board and a smaller mating contrast piece. Joint them together then cut the DTs again with a shallower depth and different cut widths.
The jig is just a sled that runs the board over the router table bit. The "magic" is the ability to move the fence in accurate increments for each pass. Marks on the indexing tape show where to set the fence for each pass. Really just eliminates doing the math.
With the DT router bits, one is limited by the shaft width at the narrow point of the pin/tail gap, but the spacing can be varied for stuff like a 1/8" TS slice to remove a box lid.
Something to try out when I have free time, but I always seem to be in a rush so getting fancy on corners usually means another design that I don't have to think about too much.
I hand cut 4 corners of a box with inlaid dovetails in under an hour. No setup. I wouldn't buy an expensive jig like Incra or any other one unless I was doing mass production. For now and then use, all the expense, and it sits around is not attractive to me. I had a craftsman jig once and didn't use it. Finally gave it away. Never regretted it.
I agree with that for dedicated dovetail jigs, but in my case I use the Leigh when I need to knock out a set of drawers. The Incra is my router table fence. The add-ons for doing all the fancy stuff was included with it since it really added nothing to the cost of the fence other than some plastic tape inserts and a right angle push block for holding the DT workpiece. Fence on its own is great for micro-adjusting the distance to the bit for general use. The Leigh is aces for half blinds, makes a pile of cuttings though (feel like a hamster in a cage)
