Currently one of my projects involves making some drawers. It seemed like a good chance to actually have a topic on something other than sharpening. Hopefully anyone with tips, tricks or other insights will add to this.

Most of the time for me, cutting tails first is easier since for projects like this it is easy to saw two boards at once. Also the drawer fronts will be half blind dovetails and if there is a way of doing pins first on this it eludes me. Most of the time for full through dovetails cutting pins first or tails first makes little difference.

These drawer sides already have the front tails cut. To me that was an error for the simple reason that dovetails seem to improve with practice through a project. Maybe it should have occurred to me to start with the joints that are least likely to be seen first. Hopefully others may learn from my errors.

The first step is to set a gauge to the height of the tails. for through dovetails the mating stock is used to set the gauge. Some add a hair to make the pins and tails ‘proud’ of their respective mates. In the case at hand, the drawer front will use half blind dovetails. The gauge was set to roughly 5/8 of the thickness of the front piece. This can be less or more depending on the preference of the one making them.

The slot for the bottom was cut before cutting the material to length. For the marking and cutting step, a piece cut to fit the slot to align the two sides seems to make things go a little easier.

Alignment Pin.jpg

This can also help to verify everything is square and the same length. Without squareness and matching sizes a finished piece will not be square and may even be a bit difficult to fit in the space made for the drawer.

There are many ways to mark or layout dovetails. For this particular piece the end pins were drawn out first. Three tails seemed like a good place to start. The pin board across the back is only wide enough to reach from the top of the slot for the bottom to the top of the drawer. For three tails there are five pins. The end pins are already marked. So the dividers were used to make five equal spaces on the base line. This was set to be slightly larger than my 1/2” paring chisel. This way the space between the tails at the base is 1/2”+ and the smallest space between the pins is the same. Other strategies are easy to layout. Most often seen is marking along the top instead of the base. Another odd method of mine uses story sticks with the dovetail spacing already marked and it is easily transferred to a workpiece. This is a friction divider. Once the first division is set, it is a good idea to check the dividers against it just incase setting them down or bumping them may have changed their setting.

Step to the Mark.jpg

This dovetail tool was bought at a lumber yard where it and its steeper angle brother were ordered in error. The one in use is a 1:6 slope. They were not all that expensive because they wanted to get them out of their display. They are made by Joseph Marples. Turns out there are a lot of Marples in the history of tool making.

Knife lines can be difficult to see even with good lighting. Often my pencil point is touched up and run over the knife lines. Some like to place tape on the workpiece before knifing the lines. Then the tape is peeled away from either the waste or the keeper wood to help guide the sawing. What ever system one uses doesn’t matter as long as the lines can be seen. Some actually do not bother to mark the first half of the joint and saw by eye. My hope is to some day be that good.

One very important key to tight fitting dovetails is being able to saw to a line.

Sawing to Line.jpg

Practice, practice, practice!

The waste area is marked. Then it is sawn free with a fret saw. Many of my dovetails have been chopped out, but since acquiring a good fret saw my chisels mostly only pare anymore on the tail board.

Here waste is being pared away with a skew chisel:

Skew Paring.jpg

This and its companion were made from some spare 1/4” socket chisels. This is why a chisel needs to be sharp enough to cleanly and accurately pare end grain.

Before setting up to mark the pin board all the tails are checked for square.

Checking Square.jpg

Once the tail board is checked and pared as needed it should be left as is. Any further paring to fit should be reserved as much as is possible for the pin board.

If something has been left out, please step up and add it in.

Hopefully this may be of help to someone.

Pin Board to Follow When time allows.

jtk