GGs;

If this ground's been covered before, please accept my apologies. After
taking the time to study the disagrams here

> http://www.wood-workers.com/users/charlieb/DovetailDrawer12.html

I think I get it. I may be slow, but it took a while to figure out that we
are looking edge-on at a board lying flat on the bench. Anyway, he's doing
two things that prohibit the "X"ed out moves: (1) he's working on a tail
board with very narrow pin spaces - too narrow to safely plunge in with a
chisel from the end, so he's going in from the top. (2) He's protecting
the surface of the adjoining tails by not levering down and hitting them -
hence the emphasis on "SNAP"ing the chip out with the bezel down. And, of
course, he's making the plunge cuts that define ends of the spaces with
the bezel toward the waste sice.

When I took Marc Adams' dovetail class, he taught us to go in from the
end. Even with the gaping spaces between tails, I think I still managed to
nick the edge of more than one tail. This approach keeps the chisel away
from the tails throughout the chopping process. I'm too much of a
knuckle-dragger to make really pretty drawers with those nice, tiny pins,
so I haven't tried his technique. But it looks sound to me.

-- 
Steve - another Kokomo galoot