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 [...]

Show Us Your Best Dovetail Tricks

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 [...]

Thrifty Dovetail Jig

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 [...]

Read Your Own Blog, Dummy

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 [...]

Sawing Out Dovetail Waste

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: [...]

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