I had a plan to build a wall cabinet for my beautiful and talented wife to store her sewing materials in. I was going to make it out of maple to match the sewing table I built for her. I wanted to use dovetail joints to add a nice detail to the cabinet. I have never done dovetail joints so I decided to practice on some scrap wood. I had some western red cedar that was the same width as the sides of the cabinet I was planning to build so I cut it up into equal size lengths to give me four joints to practice on.
I laid out the tails using 1 in 7 angle on the dovetails and equally spacing them for the width. I cut them freehand with my 8” Lynx Gents Saw being careful to always cut on the waste side. Getting the angle right each time took the most practice and once the very rigid saw was headed in the wrong direction it was hard/impossible to correct.
I tried a number of different methods for clearing the waste, in the soft cedar using a chisel was actually quite difficult and there was a lot of crushing/tearing of the wood at the edges, so I ended up using a coping saw to remove as much waste as possible and then I used a rasp and some chiseling to refine the fit.
I then traced the tails onto the opposite side of the joint being careful to note which side was the outside of the box. The tails were easier since the saw was vertical for all of the cuts. I then used chisel and rasp to fine tune them until they fit.
I got progressively better at each joint with less mistakes and better fit sooner. I realized that I had made a box when I put all the joints together. I decided I would finish the box. I cut grooves in the inside for a top and a bottom made out of 1/4” plywood. I sanded all the surfaces up to 320 grit and then I glued up the box. After the glue had cured, I did some touch up sanding and I carefully filled all of the worst gaps in my early dovetails.
I then cut the top of the box off on the table saw. I then put two coats of hard wax oil on the outside. Once that had dried I put on the hinges and a hasp for a small lock.
I didn’t really have a purpose for the box so I gave it away to a friend. It was an excellent small project to get some experience doing dovetails before I committed to doing them on expensive material.
