The first time I ever encountered a dovetail joint was when I had a dear friend who is a beautiful craftsman makes a box for me to store something precious to me. It blew me away by the sheer beauty in these edges, and when I asked my friend about the intricacies of the box, I learned first about dovetail joints.
Upon looking further into it, not only did I find out that these sorts of joints had been around for many years, but that they are one of the strongest joints you can have with attaching things at right angles.
For those who don't have many years as a craftsman as my friend does, what are our options? Thankfully, with the innovation in crafting tools, it's possible to get these joints using a machine rather than doing them by hand.
Before we get into the intricacies of how to make a dovetail joint, we should start with the different dovetail joints there are and how they differ from each other.
Types of Dovetail Joints
Through Joint
This joint is pretty much self-explanatory. It is a joint that goes straight through the joint. This is the most common type of dovetail joint you'll find.
Half-Blind Dovetail Joint
This joint is for those projects that require a little more subtlety in its joints while also providing the same structural integrity and strength that a standard through joint would provide. An example of this could be the drawer in a chest of drawers. You wouldn't see the joints usually until the drawer is out of the cabinet, and you could find them on the sides of the drawer itself. This ensured that the contents you put in them would not fall through should you put something heavy into it.
Equipment for Making Dovetail Joints
Dovetail Jig
A dovetail jig takes all the guesswork out of creating dovetail joints in your project. Unlike the router and jig option, this is a jig specifically designed to cut dovetail joints. However, this will depend on which specific joints you're looking to create for your project.
Therefore, it's always best to do your research on particular jigs to see if they meet up with your workflow and project requirements.
Since these specific jigs can vary widely in cost, you must consider how much use you'll get out of the equipment before investing in it.
Table Saw
A table saw, while a standard piece of equipment in most of our arsenals, is a great tool to use when making dovetail joints. Learning how to make dovetail joints with a table saw is more difficult than making them with a jig would be, but it gives you more options with the joints you want to use and their dimensions. This enables you to have the opportunity to try different joints and other factors while being able to adjust settings as needed.
How to Make a Dovetail Joint
- Decide what board is going to be the pinboard and the other the tail. Doing this will determine which bit of the wood will have what element of the joint in it, i.e. the pinboard will have all the pins for the joint, and the tailboard will have all the tail joints. I know that this might sound obvious, but the last thing you want to do is to put pins in your tailboard. So label your boards!
- Create your baseline. Usually, this is measured by the thickness of your boards you're using. Try not to overextend these baselines, as doing so will go past the corner itself and potentially ruin the overall look you're going for.
- Determine the size of your half pin. All dovetail joints start with a half pin. This is, as the name would imply, be half the width of your standard pin is on your board.
- Measure. Now we're onto the measuring part of the equation. The maths for this is simple. You're going to take the two half pin sizes and divide the space between pins and tails.
- Cut
- Pair down any excess and removing any waste
- Test the new join by doing a dry fit
- Once you're happy with the dry fit, be sure to secure and seal it.
- A brief mathematical calculation can help with this.
- If you're looking at ten pins which are 10 mm, that means its 100mm (10 x 10 = 100)
- With a space of 500mm between the half pins minus the total pins (500 - 100 = 400)
- Take the total pins and divide them by your pins + 1 (400 / 11 = 36.36)
- From here, you have your overall measurements. Once you mark them out lightly on your board, you'll be able to see how the joints might look and if you must adjust your number of pins and tails.