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March, 2003
Beginner's Mind: Laying Out Hand-Cut Dovetails Part II: Cutting The Tails
As I made clear in the previous page, my main purpose in writing this tutorial has been to discuss a logical way of thinking about dovetail layout. Many dovetail tutorials can be found on the Internet or in print, written by more experienced woodworkers. Since I based my own cutting methods mostly on theirs, this section has little that's original. But since we're already here, I'll go ahead and demonstrate the cutting procedure I've adopted. I'm currently using a number of Japanese dôzuki (back saws) since—needless to say—they're available widely here in Japan. These all work pretty well, some better than others depending on the wood, but you may prefer a traditional Western style dovetail saw. To each his own.
In the previous section I marked the layout lines and "X"s on the waste portions of the sockets. Next, I place the workpiece flat on the bench and use a chisel to make a groove along the base line under each socket, marking the baselines of the waste portions. Doing this provides me with a sharper edge for the socket, and helps guide later saw cuts.
1. With the workpiece upright in the vise again, place the edge of your backsaw just on the waste side of one of the outermost pencil lines (half pin), and cut down to the baseline.
Be careful not to cut too far, especially with the tails! Some people recommend tilting the workpiece in the vise so that the lines are perpendicular to the floor when making the bevel cuts, particularly when using a traditional pistol-grip saw. With the Japanese saws, I find it's just as easy to leave the wood vertical and tilt the saw blade. But it's up to you. Make all necessary vertical cuts in this way.
2. Tilt the workpiece 90° in the vise and use the back saw to cut down from the edge baseline to remove the waste half-pin on one end. Then flip the wood 180° and cut out the other half pin. Always cut on the waste side of the line!
After doing this, I place the workpiece flat and make chisel lines under the waste sockets on the back side of the workpiece as well.
3. With the workpiece upright in the vise again, I use a coping saw with a fresh wood-cutting blade (not too fine a pitch) to cut arcs down to the baseline of each of the two whole pins' sockets. When a right-handed person is using a coping saw, it is helpful to hold the far end of the saw's frame with the left hand to keep the blade taut. Tilt the saw as your cut descends and try to meet the bevel cut perfectly at the baseline, or just a bit above.
In any event, the most important aspect of making these coping cuts is to avoid letting the back (distant) side of the coping saw tilt down too far behind the workpiece; if you do, you will cut below the baseline on that side. After making the two arcing cuts, reverse the board in the vise and cut another two arcs going in the opposite direction.
4. With very soft woods, you can use a razor knife to cut away the remaining waste. Be careful when using a chisel, since the flat edge will tend to smash the fibers rather than cut them cleanly. Chisels must be very sharp to work well with soft woods. With harder woods, you can use a variety of methods and tools including chisels, knives, and the coping saw to pare out the remaining waste. Some cuts will require the workpiece to remain upright in the vise; place it flat on the bench when chiseling with a mallet. You may also wish to consult other tutorials for differing methods of cutting out the waste.
5. Purists will probably consider this next step heretical, but I use a triangular rasp when necessary to clean up any final waste in the sockets and to smooth the sides of the tails. If you use one, great care is needed to keep the sides straight and not remove too much material.
Once you've completed cutting the tails in the drawer side, check your matching marks on your drawer front (A-A')and place the matching piece into the vise with end grain upright. Rest the side board's tails against the end grain of the face board, and transfer the outlines of the tails, using a sharp pencil or marking knife. A picture frame miter clamp is ideal for this step.
Cutting the Pins
1. With the pins marked on the end grain, use a try square to continue the lines straight down the face to the baseline.
2. After marking all lines, once again mark the waste portions on both end grain and face.
3. The remaining steps are similar to those for cutting the tails. After cutting the vertical lines with the back saw, though, you have to be more careful when making the coping cuts. As shown in the photo below, start your cut with the saw's blade parallel to the right side of the socket, and as you cut toward the left, swing the blade around to bring it parallel with the opposite wall of the socket.
4. Paring out the waste also requires a bit more care due to the way the sockets change width across the grain. After removing the bulk of the waste with the coping saw, a razor saw can be used to make a series of shallow vertical cuts down to the baseline to facilitate removal of waste with a chisel or knife.
Well, I'm in a hurry here and haven't been very careful about cleaning up these cuts, but as you can see, the two pieces can now be tapped together quite snugly with almost no gap between the tails and pins.
How much gap you're willing to settle for depends on the nature of the project and your own sense of skills. Anyway, having a few minor gaps assures that no one will mistake your work for an automated factory job! One other note: when making a typical drawer, you'll probably want to place a dado (groove) along the bottom edge of the sides and front (and possibly the back) to hold in a bottom panel. Ideally, the dado should be a stopped dado (at the front of the drawer), to prevent it from cutting through part of a tail or pin and showing up on the outside (see the example below). But that's a small aesthetic decision.
A couple of other recent projects: This was another learning experience: a drawer I built to fit a sharpening bench I'd built earlier. It looks worse here than it is in person. Kind of a "cut away" view of the mechanics involved, it also demonstrates what happens when you don't think things through from the beginning. The drawer itself is tight and fits the desk perfectly, but I cut grooves in both side walls to support the drawer on runners mounted in the desk, and since I didn't make them stopped grooves, they cut through half of the center socket holding the center pin in the drawer front. Functionality is not impaired, but you're right, it doesn't look very nice. The groove for the drawer floor can also be seen peeking out at the lower part of the drawer's side. (The red color is candle wax I placed on the runner grooves).
This is the set of four Japanese-style unfinished Paulownia drawers I built to fit inside a TV armoire. We needed the drawer space worse than the TV. Handcut dovetails are not flawless, but they are unique and identify the piece in a distinctive way. For more pictures of these drawers, see the previous page
Finally, a small painted writing desk I made for my wife: Some Dovetail Links The following are a few links to descriptions of dovetailing by professionals or advanced amateurs. You may find them more helpful than my description here, and in fact, now that I have the basic layout idea down, I hope to go back and learn more from them myself! Handcut Dovetails, from the Tails-First Perspective. Interesting, but no pictures! An article describing a pins-first view of the process, called Hand-cut through dovetails. It's located on the larger Woodcraft site. Several other dovetailing articles are also on the site. This one has good information, though too few photos for my beginner's taste. One of the best omnibus sites for dovetailing links is Alan Foust's Hand Cut Dovetails page. Lots of links to other sites about dovetailing. Danford C. Jennings contributes advice to a number of woodworking forums. His tutorial on cutting hand-cut dovetails can be found uploaded to Marc Phillip' "WoodMangler" site on the Primers page. Check out the other pages of Marc's site while you're at it. The The Howard County Woodworkers Guild in Howard County, MD (USA) has published another tutorial from the "pins first" perspective: A Dovetail Journey: aka How I Learned to Cut Dovetails by Hand. Everything is laid out step by step, and each step is on an individual page. The photos are rather large, though, so it's a bit slow-loading for a modem connection. Also, no theory of layout is presented, so it's pretty much up to the reader to decide. Gary Rogowski, an editor with Fine Woodworking has a brief though excellent online video tutorial on dovetail layout called Easy Dovetail Layout: Lay out hand-cut dovetails with a ruler and simple math that shows another easy way to do dovetail layouts with a low level of stress. This site wasn't available when I did my tutorial, but it's a nice alternative if you don't care for my method. Chris's website has a dovetail tutorial with some features similar to mine. Appendix:Selecting a Pin Width |
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Green Gables: A Contemplative Companion to Fujino Townshipby Norman Havens nhavens@gol.com
Updated: February 1, 2007
URL: http://www2.gol.com/users/nhavens/
