Shaper Origin and Half-Blind Dovetails

[Rob Young]

... snip ...

I think CNC wood machines are the state of the art for modern woodworking and will, like all other wood machine innovations, become inevitable components in well equipped wood shops. I’m totally okay with it and will be curious to see what they can do. Just like 3D printers.  But I think I fail to see what is fun about their use. I’ll be curious to learn.

The "fun" part for me is figuring out what they can do. This is a combination of CAD, CAM, tool selection and jig/fixturing. And I continue to enjoy diving deeper into handwork and the how and why there too. 

Journey, not destination.

But in the end, as I mentioned above, they leave their fingerprints on the project same as any other tool if you know where to look and what to look for.

[Rob Young]

What is fun for me (including completing the project in a reasonable time) is what determines the tools I use.

But I fail to see any real difference between CNC and using a template to guide a powered router.  The hands on aspect is equal with the shaper CNC under discussion.

For one-off templating work, you can generally skip the template and cut right from the SO (or at least cut deep enough to finish on a bandsaw and clean up with a pattern/flush trim bit, OSS, whatever). With the proper work-holding and referencing, doing multiples isn't difficult though. But given it is limited to an 8mm or 1/4" shank maximum and I think maybe 1.25HP it can't take heavy cuts & maintain its accuracy.

For making multiples, a template along with a bandsaw and big-boy router are the way to go. The SO excels at making templates and doesn't take over the shop floor the way a large gantry router does.

I'm getting my head around another aspect of the SO vs. large gantry routers and jigs. And that, as mentioned, is the space it requires. Yes, you need the space to run it but that same space is also used for other things. In storage it occupies much less than a cubic meter of space, including dust-collection. And if you have a way of guaranteeing the files aren't lost, perhaps you don't need to allocate space for storing templates for re-use. Same for jigs that might be stored for other tasks (various hinge cutting jigs for example). And in the case of doing small volume of machine cut dovetails, no need to store the DT jig. But I'm not a high-production volume shop. 

All in all, I'm glad I made the initial investment and the continued investment in learning what I can do with it. Even if some of those things aren't necessarily the most efficient method. A tool is a tool is a tool.