Tool Chest Side Panel Dovetails – Part 1
2011.05.17
Today I began the dovetails for the sides. Some people prefer to cut the pins first, others the tails first. One advantage of cutting the tails first is that you can clamp two sides together and do them at the same time. I have decided that the tails will go on the long sides (front and back), and the pins on the short sides. I began by marking the cutout for a pin centered on the glueline of the long sides. When the joints are assembled, this will hide the end-grain glue joint because the short side gluelines are in a different place. It’s mostly a cosmetic issue, but there may be some slight structural advantage.
I am using a 1:6 dovetail square. I made the back edge of the pin 1/2″. Using the 1:6 ratio and a 3/4″ depth (to match the boards), that makes the narrow part of the pin 1/4″, but it doesn’t really matter if it’s an arbitrary distance. There is a rule of thumb (not necessarily the rule of thumb) to space the dovetails twice the thickness of the wood. So I laid them out at 1–1/2″ intervals. There are various ways to accomplish this; I set a pair of dividers and then walked them out, pressing the divider tips into the soft pine to make a small mark. Then I went along with the dovetail square to draw the angled sides, and a small engineer’s square for the end grain.
After finishing the layout, I began sawing with my Wenzloff dovetail saw. The spring clamp is to hold the two panels square together, since they really want to warp. I knew I’d be fighting that. Sure hope the dovetail joints at the corners are enough to hold the panels straight when this all gets glued together.
Not the most accurate sawing the world, but not too bad. I can fix some of it with chisels. Besides, since pine is pretty soft, there will be some give when the joints come together.
I decided to put the panels on my sawbenches to chop and pare the waste, allowing me to stand over the joints and sight down the chisels. I used my smallest Narex chisel for a couple rounds of chopping, then a larger Narex.
When only a little was left, I switched to an Ashley Iles for paring. One bad thing about pine is that paring end grain requires a very sharp chisel, and even then it can blow out. But this will be hidden inside the joints, so I can live with some here and there. I used a larger chisel to clean up some of the sides where I didn’t saw to my line. Generally, it’s best if you can assemble dovetails sawcut-to-sawcut.
With one side of each long panel complete, I went through the process again for the other side.
Panel Glue-ups