Seriously, I always wondered how finicky it must be to fit up a dovetailed skirt, thus I used mitered, nailed-on pieces at the bottom of a dovetailed tool chest I built for our living history farm. Thus, I avoided making repeated gross errors while working in front of the public! (Cop out.) The discipline of practicing is easier in private… next to a hungry wood-burning stove to destroy the evidence.

“The dovetailed kilt around the carcase of a tool chest (or blanket chest) is fussy to fit.

The case has to be square and plumb. The kilt material has to be flat and square. And you have to get the joint’s baselines in just the right place.

And even when you do all that, you still have gaps around the kilt.”