Compound Dovetails

Discover how to join oblique sides with through-dovetails. As an avid sailor and full-time furniture maker, I’ve always wanted to make a proper sea chest replete with rope beckets and a compass [...]

Dovetail Station

Cutting dovetails by hand is supposed to be an orderly, precise process. But when you’re in the thick of it, it’s all too easy to end up with a bench littered with stray tools and [...]

Line & Berry Chest of Drawers

Though not traditional, router patterns make quick work of the inlay. In southeastern Pennsylvania, just northwest of Philadelphia, is Chester County. It was one of the original three counties [...]

Dovetail Marking Fan

Equally-Spaced Dovetails Every Time When laying out dovetails, I always start by marking the centers of the pins so the distance between them is approximately the same. I came up with this trick [...]

Router Table Dovetails

There are lots of excuses for not using dovetails; cutting them by hand takes time, patience, and lots of practice. A dovetail jig is relatively fool proof, but if you don’t use it [...]

How to make a Sliding Dovetail

Sliding dovetail joints are peculiar—sometimes, the two parts are meant to travel past one another; other times, they’re glued together. Whatever their purpose, making these joints is [...]

How to Cut Dovetails with a Keller Jig

There are numerous jigs for cutting dovetails with a router. My go-to is the Keller pro series model 1601. It’s simple to use, though unlike jigs that cut pins and tails in one fell swoop, [...]

Dutch Tool Chest Dovetails

I’m pressing pause on my saw restoration for a bit because I realized that once it’s refurbished, I will have no place to put it. I have a few hand tools that I’ve accumulated over [...]