Easy project for dovetail practice

[Silly_Billy]

My last projects have gone well, resulting in a couple of new tables in the house. So I reckon it's time I faced up to the dreaded dovetail! Please could anyone recommend an easy project for dovetail practice?

(Before you say it, I know I first need to practice dovetails on some spare wood, before I let myself loose on a real project.)

 

[MartinCox]

I believe the principals of making a dovetail joint are many of the principals you need for any competent hand woodworking skills. That is, accurate setting out and marking; sawing precisely to the waste side of the line; accurate use of chisels etc. If you develop those skills, then it becomes much easier to make good joints be they dovetail or lap or mitre or whatever.

I would also suggest that you don’t become fixated upon making a good dovetail joint as the be all and end all of good workworking. It obviously relies both on mechanical and chemical (glue) and so is a good joint but still only a joint.

I can say, on rare occasions, that I think it can become a feature which adds to the end product - think some of the work that Robinson House Studio has shown. To some though, it seems as the ultimate test, almost the definitive test, of the skill of a woodworker or of a piece of furniture.

I have to say that not a single one of the customers we have made for has ever asked for a dovetail joint to be included. I don’t think they care about how something is jointed - they do care, in so far as joints are concerned, that they remain strong. I have had one actually ask for them to be removed as they thought it detracted from the aesthetic of the piece. They pay the money and so have the final say.

It’s a question that I guess nobody knows the answer to, although that might not stop some trying, as to whether makers back when glues were not of the strength that we benefit from today as to whether they would have used that joint to the extent that they perhaps were forced to.

There is this phrase “muscle memory” which may be accurate or not and which older people may prefer to phrase as “practice makes perfect”. The essence is the same - keep doing the same things and you will get better and better at them

 

[Silly_Billy]

Thanks Martin. As I’m doing this for myself, dovetailing is an itch I’d like to scratch.

I think most of my hand skills are up to dovetails, apart from my level of accuracy with chisels. I’ve put a lot of effort into practicing accuracy with sawing, planing, etc. This has paid off. Now I need to do the same with chiselling, but it would be good to have an eventful project in mind that involves dovetails.

 

[John15]

A small side table with a drawer is fairly straightforward. You have both through and hidden dovetails to work on. Hidden ones are the easiest - only one exposed face!!

John

 

[MartinCox]

So long as you take a balanced view to the joint, then go for it. We did a fairly tall chest of drawers for a client who wanted a highly figured face to the front. Our answer - I’m sure there are many - was to use a 15mm thick plank of walnut to be the false fronts of the drawers which also covered the chest sides and drawer dividers. We cut the plank carefully so that, once constructed, it looked like a single piece of rich walnut. We made very simple pulls also out of the walnut. If the plank had been 25mm or more, I would favoured routed hidden side pulls.

Taking John’s point, that kind of piece may be an easier start as you can do through dovetails rather than blind.

 

[custard]

I've seen the photos you've posted of some of your work Billy, it's impressive stuff and you're definitely ready to vanquish the dovetail bogie man and move a couple of rungs up the skills ladder!

Yes, you absolutely should practise on scrap first. But here's a suggestion for a first project.

The first dovetails that apprentices at the Barnsley Workshops cut are pairs of Book Ends, these are about 12mm thick, 125mm wide, and the upright is about 200mm tall with a curved top. You start with rough sawn boards and absolutely everything is done with hand tools.

Work with a board longer than necessary, so if you make a cock-up you just cut off the offending joint and start again. After doing lots of these and hitting the target time for making them, apprentices then move on to the same thing but with mitred corners. After that comes a "practise drawer" made to the best arts & crafts standards, and then you're considered ready to dovetail on actual furniture.

Now here's the really critical thing about dovetailing that hardly ever gets mentioned. It's much, much harder to dovetail neatly and accurately if the board is even fractionally out of true. For someone in a well equipped workshop with a good quality planer/thicknesser and an accurate cross cut saw that's not an issue. But for many people the real challenge in cutting dovetails isn't the actual joinery itself, it's starting with perfectly square and true timber. You say you're in Southern England, if you're anywhere near the New Forest you're welcome to drop by my workshop and pick up some straight grained stuff from the off-cuts pile that I'll machine perfectly true to give you the best possible chance of success.

One other thing, the Book Ends shown above are in Oak, that's not actually the easiest dovetailing timber choice for a beginner because it doesn't take or show layout lines particularly clearly. A slightly softer and closer grained timber like Cherry or Sycamore are kinder alternatives for a first attempt.

Good luck!

 

[custard]

Incidentally, this is the kind of hand cut dovetail work I'm doing all the time on commercial projects,

Based on your previous work I see no reason why you couldn't be doing this within a couple of weeks of starting.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Some woodworking tools - plough planes, for example - have several ancillary cutters and bits, and making a simple wooden box to keep them all together can be handy. Doesn't have to be fancy, but worth doing reasonably well - so an ideal simple but useful dovetailed box project. It could have a lid sliding in a ploughed groove, or a hinged lid like a mini toolchest. It could even be a basic open box with a bottom pinned on - that would still serve the purposes of simple introductory exercise and 'keeper togetherer' of tool cutters and bits.


An old-fashioned pencil-box might be a slightly posher, but still simple exercise, or even a jewellery-type box. The latter could be quite fancy - maybe an 'intermediate' or 'improver' project, using some nice wood and care to get a really good fit to the joints.

 

[thetyreman]

before you start, make this https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com/vi ... -template/

and this is a great first project https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com/vi ... ject-info/

 

[knockknock]

I'm in the make a box camp:

 

[richarddownunder]

Me too...Not sure mahogany/sapele is the easiest stuff for marking though...

 

[Silly_Billy]

Thanks everyone. Lots of good advice (as usual on this forum!).

The replies reminded me that actually need some new bookends. In the meantime, I’ve been messing about on some scrap wood. I think there’s a lot to be said for practising hand skills as an exercise in itself. Interestingly, I found oak easier than pine.

 

[ED65]

Interestingly, I found oak easier than pine.

That's quite common. Oak puts up a stiffer resistance so is easier to pare with a chisel. Any wood that is a little 'squishy' is hard to cut effectively with a chisel, and the earlywood of pine/spruce can be the very definition of squishy. Hence why paring pine end grain is considered a good proofing test of chisel sharpness (far better than shaving hair or slicing paper).

 

[Tasky]

As above, watch a few videos (like the Paul Sellers ones) and have a crack at some dovetail boxes for practice. Even the naff ones can be found a use, if only as rustic planters for the garden or something, so it won't ever be a waste.

As you start improving, you can put the results to better uses such as holding tools, bits, parts, screws and so on. Eventually you'll be making nice jewellery boxes and drawers and things.

That's what I'm aiming for, anyway!

 

[D_W]

I'd make a small chest with poplar or pine drawers, and half blind fronts (through backs).

Do your stock prep with machines so that you know it's square and equal thickness, and try to improve one thing each time you sit down to cut pins and tails. If there is an error, think about why it is. In my case, the early errors were usually marking (pieces moving, etc) or trying to correct a tight fit in a lazy way (chiseling too much off, or floating off material).

It's my opinion that you don't want to just make an easy project that is dovetails (but that you might not have a use for), but instead make a useful project that has dovetails (but will allow you to explore other things, like how the drawers are situated in a carcase, what the proportions are to make them look nice, what supports them in a carcase and how is it attached).

It sounds arduous, but each is one thing at a time and you'll be much further along.

Repair errors rather than throwing away unless something is terminal, and try to do your best and check your ego at the door (especially if there is something else in your life that you do really well).

And a tip from Jordan Peterson's 12 rules. Compare yourself to you the day before, not to things you see other people posting about, because:
* you're not them (they may be better at woodworking or progress faster)
* they may show you their tenth set of dovetails and call them their second, just because of ego

I fancy myself pretty good at minor elements on planes, and doing them quickly. I thought in picking up making guitars, i'd be able to cut a neat and tidy binding channel by hand without making much in additional tools. You should see how bad my first two efforts are. I resent the bad quality at the time I'm making it, but within a very short period of time resign myself to repurposing the blank that I'm not satisfied with (perhaps to moulding planes or other tools) and doing it again. Tolerance for making errors and embracing learning from them will make you better, faster, and they're more memorable than a memorized perfect method.

 

[Jacob]

.... I’ve been messing about on some scrap wood. I think there’s a lot to be said for practising hand skills as an exercise in itself....

Yes definitely.
Custards bookends a good idea - just cut them off and start again if no good.
Don't lose sight of the fact that they can be set out freehand, or pin holes cut freehand without even setting out, just spaced and angled by eye or divider. The fine art is in accurately copying the pins from the pinholes. Have a look at old furniture - they did it very differently (and fairly casually) compared to strict modern fashions.

 

[D_W]

I took a picture of my parents' furniture years ago. Mostly northeast middle-of-the-road (now) items that would've been out of the range of the average person when they were made.

the dovetails were similar to English style (and some of the pieces may have been English, there's a lot of importing of that stuff to here, because your antique market is so depressed due to supply).

Anyway, I took a picture of the dovetails and posted them on another forum. A couple had stray saw cuts, but minor. All of them had lovely proportions, and one had failed on a drawer on an occasional table (not the expected way - the board actually severed across its long grain about a quarter inch behind the tails -no clue how that occurred).

Anyway, the conclusion of the majority of posters was that the dovetails were sloppy and "they wouldn't tolerate them in their furniture". They weren't that sloppy, I was surprised how well they were done given that they were certainly done at pace. Something similar to a cosman-esque type joint was held up as the standard - tight joints but fat boards (ultimately, the work ends up looking amateurish because the drawers are planed 4/4 material).

Point being, nicely made with lovely proportions is far better than perfectly executed and bulky or strange proportions.

Forums and beginners often think that learning about the proportions is something to do later, but it's important from the outset. Perfect layout (geometrically identical drawers from one to the next in terms of tail size, evenness and pin size) and execution on a joint that's to be hidden is sort of a strange thing on anything but the highest order wares.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

And a tip from Jordan Peterson's 12 rules. Compare yourself to you the day before, not to things you see other people posting about, because:
* you're not them (they may be better at woodworking or progress faster)
* they may show you their tenth set of dovetails and call them their second, just because of ego

Blimey! Jordan Peterson gets everywhere, doesn't he! Mind you, he deserves to - and he did build some of his own furniture, so he's entitled to a mention on a woodworking forum.

His original list of rules for life ran to about 40, and a bit of googling (other search engines are available) will soon find them (see link below). Another of his rules is to make one room of your house as beautiful as you can, which rather echoes William Morris' injunction to have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

http://highexistence.com/jordan-peterson-rules-living/

 

[Jacob]

A lot of people think Peterson is just another self elected would-be guru and a prat. I do too, even if he did build his own furniture!

 

[custard]

And we're off.

Because Peterson is a star amongst the alt right any mention of him becomes a political discussion conducted through code and proxy.

Mods, we're now only a few replies away from the first mention of "Hitler" and "Brexit". Rule 6 says this should be kicked into the long grass.