The Tools You Need
Tools for dovetailing (starting at bottom right): cutting gauge, try square, dovetail saw, Japanese miter gauge, sliding bevel, bevel edge chisels, Warrington hammer, coping saw, pencil, marking knife.
Grip and stance are important. Grasp the saw in a pistol grip and stand back and far enough to the side so that saw, wrist, forearm, upper arm and shoulder move in the same plane. Remove the waste with a coping saw. The key is to keep sawing while turning the blade from vertical to horizontal.
With the pin piece in a vise, use the tail piece as a guide to mark the pins.	Start the cut at the far side, follow the squared line, then angle the saw by sighting down the guide line. With the saw teeth held horizontal, cut the slopes of the tails down to the knifed shoulder line on both sides.
Establish the shoulder lines by vertical paring with a 1/4" chisel. Flatten the pin sockets by horizontal paring.	After removing most of the tailsocket waste with a coping saw, use a chisel to define the shoulder line and to flatten the socket.
The single-lap joint on the front is marked out by two gauge settings and three gauge lines. The first setting (1/32" less than the thickness of the side) determines how far the tails stand proud of the pins. The second setting determines the length of the tails and, at the same time, the thickness of the end wall.

With the type of dovetail joint selected for your project and the design and layout complete, you might be eager to get started. Before you go directly to cutting project pieces, though, it’s good to remember that in woodworking, as in the rest of life, practice makes perfect. So it’s best to begin by making a few practice joints. Don’t use wood that’s too hard (such as oak, cherry or maple) or too soft, and don’t simply use any old scrap lying around. Poplar, for example, should work well for practice.

This part of Lesson 1 will show how to make the through dovetail and the single-lap dovetail.

The through dovetail

Though each step involves several operations (as shown in the photos at right), cutting a through dovetail involves a simple three-step methodology:

• Cut the slope of the tails with a dovetail saw, remove the waste between the tails with a coping saw and flatten the bottom of the pin socket with a chisel.

• Use the tails as a template to mark out the pins with a knife.

• Cut the sides of the pins with a dovetail saw, remove the waste between the pins with a coping saw and flatten the bottom of the tail socket. Clean up with a chisel.

Single-lap dovetail

The single-lap dovetail is the joint at the front of any drawer constructed using dovetail joinery. It gets its name from the fact that the front piece overlaps the tail ends on the sides.

Although the design and layout will differ (see illustration), the tails in a single-lap dovetail are cut with the same method used in cutting the tails of a through dovetail.

Once the tails are cut, mark the pins from the tails by clamping the pin piece in the vise so that it protrudes about 1/8". Position the tail piece to the lap gauge line and align the bottom edges flush. Mark the pins as for a through joint.

To saw the pins, start the cut on the corner nearest you. Saw across the end grain to establish the correct line, then saw down the vertical line. Next, chop out the waste with a chisel and mallet. Lay the drawer front on the bench and, using the widest chisel that will fit between the saw kerfs, begin to chop by positioning the chisel about halfway down the joint (see Photo 1). The first piece will come flying out. Make two or three more chops towards the knife line, but keep off the line by about 1/16".

Next, clamp the drawer front upright in the vise and, slice by slice, cut down vertically with gentle mallet blows (see Photo 2). With the bulk of the waste removed, pare to the knife lines by hand.

You can’t remove the waste from the corners until the end grain fibers have been severed. Do this on each side with a skew chisel — 1/4" chisels ground and sharpened to the angle of the tail (see Photo 3). Now, by judicious paring, you can clean out the corner waste.

The Moment of Truth

Assemble the two parts of each joint. The side surface sitting above the end grain of the single-lap joint is planed flush.