branagan custom

If you read the key to killer dovetails, you know as well as I do that good dovetails come over time with lots of practice. This being said I try to – and enjoy – a little dovetail project periodically (if not a big one).

To begin I will conclude that the dovetails is not about the dovetails.

Cutting the dovetails is one piece of the puzzle. Yes, I practice my sawing accuracy and speed, chiseling the recesses, transferring the marks and repeating. But the moment when dovetails seat perfectly snugly is a product of much more than dovetails. This is the end result of accurate sawing of stock, dimensioning, measuring and marking and planing to your lines, squaring up, not to mention before blade touches wood – designing.

It’s a result of the essential processes of every woodworking project you’ll undertake in a joiner’s shop. It’s why dovetails are a mark of skill in the hand tool woodworker’s world, and why I like to practice them now and then. In practicing dovetails, I practice everything.

Which brings me back to this little pine box on which I planned to practice dovetails.

From the start, the main idea behind this box was to try an inset flip-top lid with no hinges, just dowels in the sides for it to rotate on.

My stock selection was some lovely clear, straight-grained pine I had lying around. It was a cutoff from a 5/4 rough-sawn board that wouldn’t be useful for much else.

I hadn’t planned very far ahead but the general idea was to make the ends higher than the front and back, to accommodate the thickness of the lid and to put the dowels through the ends into the lid acting as a hinge.

The process start to finish looks like:

There’s quite a lot more to a box than a box, there’s quite a lot more to dovetails than the dovetails.

Like I mentioned the material was some leftover roughsawn pine. It was 5/4 stock so I decided to resaw it. Since these components are all small and the pine is straight and dead clear, this was nothing. The harder part was dimensioning after ripping it and they ended up at about 3/8s thick. I squared the faces, edges and shot the ends to get them ready for joinery. Since it was so clear there was barely any character or discrepancy in the grain so I didn’t pay a second thought to orientation and show faces.

Once I had them oriented I ripped a strip off the front and back components to make room for the lid meaning the ends were wider (taller) than the sides by the thickness of the lid. This made the joinery slightly trickier than usual with leaving the excess at the top of the ends to hang over the sides.

The dovetail process went smooth and they fitted snug – not much that can go wrong in pieces this small, soft and clear. Once the dovetails were fitted I could start working on the bottom by taking the internal measurements directly off the carcass.

Typically I would plough a groove about ¼ by ¼ but the sides were only ⅜ thick which would leave only ⅛ thickness behind the groove. I didn’t like the chances that the sides would just snap at this weak point so needed to find an alternative. Another reason to avoid this is the gap left by the groove at the end of the dovetails.

It could have gone a few ways – I could have run a rabbet around the bottom and set a panel in the rebate but I would still be thinning the sides and have a gap at the ends. I could make a faux groove by glueing strips around the sides, setting a panel in, then glueing four more strips on top of the panel to the sides. This would need eight components which I didn’t fancy dimensioning. The last option that I ultimately went for was drawer slips – strips of wood glued around the bottom of the sides with a groove already in the strips to hold the panel. They would still take work but this was the most interesting to me in terms of execution.

So this little dovetailed pine box is getting drawer slips. How the heck do we make drawer slips?

I made this process up as I went along and it worked great. I had stock that was about 5/8ths thick and wide enough to run a groove on either side and rip down the middle. I made a quick jig with holdfasts – one holding a fence to keep the workpiece sitting right on the edge of the bench, and another to act as a stop at the front without interfering with the plough plane.

I ran the groove, flipped it around and ran the second one then ripped the piece down the middle and planed off the saw marks. Next up was mitreing the corners so again I knocked together a quick jig by glueing a little fence at 45 degrees on my shooting board. This is where I took the measurements from the assembled box, sawing a 45 degree angle on one side and shooting it to 45 then referencing it off the box to trim it, shoot the 45, and sneak up slowly to a tight fit. I repeated this process on all four sides until they all fit snugly in place inside the box.

To remove the hard corner on the interior of the box I planed an angle sloping inwards on the top of the drawer slips. Next was the tricky part. I had to glue them in place before actually glueing up the box itself because if I glued it all at the same time, or glued the box then added the slips – well, then how do I fit the bottom panel in?

I clamped the box together and one by one added the slips with 1/16th of space from the bottom of the box. I clamped them loosely, fitted / positioned them to each other, then tightened the clamps to dry overnight. I should mention that I prepped the inside surfaces of the box before glueing the slips and fully prepped the slips so once they were attached I just had to clean up any glue squeeze out, and prep the outside surfaces of the box after glue up.

Now that the slips were attached I could work on the bottom panel, according to the internal dimensions of the drawer slips. This was a straightforward process to laminate a small panel and bevel it on the underside until it fit nicely in the groove.

Once the bottom was fitted I glued up the box. This was also a quick and straightforward process and once the box was assembled I planed all the joints flush and cleaned up all the outside faces. I could also level off the bottom (this is why I left some space between the bottom edge and the drawer slips) with a plane and make sure the top of the box is in plane.

With that done I can move on to the lid. Like the bottom I take the measurements directly off the box and glue up a panel from the clear white pine. I slowly planed it to fit exactly in width and length. It ended up a bit thicker than I expected so it protruded about 1/6th higher than the ends but that was fine with me. Once the lid was fitted snugly I worked on the hinges.

I wanted to use ¼” dowels through the sides and in to the lid to act as the hinge but the space I had to run a ¼” dowel through the box side was just too small. I started to try drill a hole but it was a terrible idea and the drill just tore the pine apart. I had to cut out the ripped piece and patch it with a tiny block. The repair didn’t turn out bad but now I needed a new plan. I decided to use finishing nails in place of the dowels.

I started by clipping off the head of a nail and chucking it in my drill to use as a bit to drill the hole for the hinge nails. This worked great. Once the hole was drilled I could insert a nail into each side to act as a temporary hinge while I finished the lid – this way they could be easily removed and reinserted. When the lid was complete I could just snip off the ends and file the nail flush.

This went surprisingly well. Once the nails were in place I had to shape the back of the lid to allow clearance to actually open. I planed the back bottom edge down to a roundover and went through a few rounds of installing and removing the lid to check as I worked. While the lid was installed I opened it as far as it could go then held it up to the light, looking from the inside to outside at the lid opening to see where the light was coming through or being blocked, then removing the material that was blocking it. Once it opened I also planed the back edge to an angle just beyond 90 so the lid would sit open just past the back of the box.

When the lid was fully fitted I did some final planing and shaping to prep it for permanent installation. To install it I inserted the nails, clipped them as close as possible to the box sides then filed them flush with a file. This worked great and the mechanism is smooth.

Finally I finished it with my own finish recipe. I’m trying out a new mix and this was the first project to test it on, it’s a mix of boiled linseed oil, mineral spirits and spar urethane. I gave it one coat then a coat of past wax.

As a little practice project I’m satisfied with how it went and how it turned out. The drawer slips were a nice deviation from the norm, a challenge, and went surprisingly well though not absolutely perfect. The hinges are another experiment that went well and the finish recipe too.

I have one critique of this project that highlights somewhat of a dichotomy in woodworking. Overall the box is just not that interesting looking. The pine is clear, straight but overall just very plain. At the same time this wood is a dream for hand tool woodworking; it’s more than cooperative with no surprises and smooth planing, crisp sawing and chopping. But visually it ends up just a bit… boring.

There’s quite a lot more to a box than a box, there’s quite a lot more to dovetails than the dovetails.