In general, I write about the best way to cut dovetails as much as I write about choosing the best religion. That is, not much. One of the reasons I avoid the topic of dovetails is that it gets far too much ink already.
One retired carpenter told me that cutting dovetails probably gets more ink than anything else in woodworking, followed by resawing on the band saw, tuning up your table saw and building the ultimate router table. Ugh, just typing that list of story topics makes me queasy.
The other reason I avoid the topic of dovetails is that I think the real “secret” to a good joint is so boring that readers would fall asleep if they had to read about it. Get your Red Bull energy drinks at the ready because here it is: Pick a method (they all work). Choose a set of tools (they are all valid). Cut the joint using those techniques and those tools and refuse to vary. Refuse to try much of anything new. Refuse to take shortcuts.
And then, according to a brilliant Chinese saying: “Practice 30 more years.”
I’m not a flashy dovetailer. I don’t use radical angles. I don’t cut really tiny pins. I don’t do fancy spacing to add “visual excitement.” I lay out the joint to make it easy to cut for my set of tools.
And after 14 years of practice (I’m almost halfway there!) here’s what I get: I almost never, ever have to pare the walls of the joint. My joints assemble with a little pounding of my fist on the first try. They are always tight enough that I don’t cringe when other woodworkers pull out my drawers. I never have to fill gaps with shims.
As I’ve worked, I’ve found a few tiny revelations that help me get better results with less fuss. I’m going to show you one of them tonight.
One of my biggest frustrations when dovetailing used to be crossing the baseline when chopping out the waste between my pins and tails with a chisel. You can’t just put the chisel in your baseline and pound down. The chisel will angle back and cross the baseline.
I don’t have this problem anymore, courtesy of my cutting gauge (I now use the Tite-Mark gauge from Glen-Drake Toolworks, before that I had a Japanese cutting gauge. They are the same tool, in essence.) After I lay out my tails or pins, I score the baseline in the waste areas deeply with the cutting gauge. Then I cut the joint.
After I chop close to my baseline with a chisel, I place the chisel tip in the baseline and flick the waste off. The deep score left by my cutting gauge leaves a small 1/32" rabbet of waste below the baseline (see the photo at top for what this looks like -- it's subtle). Then I can drop my chisel tip right against the baseline and pound down. About 99 percent of the time, I make a perfect and flat cut across the waste. About 1 percent of the time I undercut the joint. But that undercut is no big deal because the undercut occurs inside the joint where no one will see. The baseline is preserved in all cases.
Should you try this? I’ll leave that to you. If you use a cutting gauge and have trouble with crossing your baselines, I think it's worth a try. But don’t rush out and buy a Tite-Mark if you are using a different kind of gauge and are pleased with it (this message is brought to you by WivesAgainstSchwarz.com).
There actually is one how-to story on the dovetail that I’m eager to write, but it’s the dovetail story that hasn’t ever been written (to my knowledge). It’s on the list of stories for upcoming issues of Woodworking Magazine, right after sawing, clamping and chiseling.
— Christopher Schwarz
