Archives

Chris Schwarz shares a dovetailing method perfect for beginners. This method helps build good habits when sawing and helps you fix any mistakes.

Learn how to make through dovetails step by step and improve your overall hand tool skills.

Yes, you’re right, Frank Klausz cutting dovetails isn’t exactly new. In fact, I’ve been watching Frank cut dovetails for 25 years. But guess what, it never gets old! This master [...]

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, [...]

I recently posted on our Instagram account and Twitter feed the opening image from Rob Cosman’s 2006 article “Houndstooth Dovetails,” and it proved remarkably popular – so I figured I [...]

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 [...]

The furniture record shows us that “perfect dovetails” is a modern mania. As the photos of antiques above prove, even some of the ugliest joints will stay together for a very long [...]

Through dovetails—for woodworkers, this is batting in the big leagues, isn’t it? Cutting them by hand certainly requires skill and practice, but if you use a well-designed router jig, almost [...]

  When beginning woodworkers rank the difficulty of the different dovetail joints, they usually think of the through-dovetail as the “bunny slope.” The half-blind dovetail is the “expert slope” – [...]

The alway-eagle-eyed Jeff Burks pointed out that I had already found an earlier reference to using a bow saw to saw out dovetail waste to the one I posted this morning. Back in 2010, I mentioned [...]

When I teach dovetailing to a class, one of the common questions is why I saw out the majority of the waste between the tails and pins, instead of chopping with a chisel. The simple answer is: [...]

When I teach woodworking, most of my job is diagnosing defective dovetails. Tail walls that are not 90°. Floors of pin and tail boards that have lumps aplenty. My diagnosis tools are my sensitive [...]