Thoughts On Dovetails: Making A Coat Rack For Our Mudroom
Dovetails are kind of forever- if you make them well, they'll be there till the house burns down. In this hand tool woodworking film, Michael cuts dovetails for a coat rack with a two shelves, a piece we built to set the tone for our mudroom. Along the way he thinks out loud about why dovetail joinery has lasted, and what it means to make something meant to outlive us.
There are 100 ways to join two boards together, many of them quick, but none are better than the dovetail. Is there any joinery that is more effective than dovetail? I am not sure… maybe the the wedges through-tenon, but that would be a subject for debate. All of the methods of traditional woodworking were born from a deep understanding of the material and how it changes throughout the seasons and over time. Mechanical joinery is an example of human ingenuity that was born out of a need for longevity. People used to buy something once and expect it to last. Moreover, we did not live in climate controlled environments, so wooden furniture would swell significantly in the summer time, and shrink quite a but in the winter. This movement stresses your joinery, unless it was inherently designed to move together. Even more so, the dovetail joint adds a mechanical element. When you think about a drawer, you are pulling on the front of that drawer every time it is opened. This force gets translated to joinery. As long as you have your tails on the drawer side and not the drawer front, however, the angles of the tails help keep the drawer intact, even with regular use.
Dovetails might be the single-most iconic image of the entire craft of woodworking. They are just so visually striking and intriguing that it has even worked its way into our vernacular. People who know very little about woodworking will talk about the way one thing dovetails into another. Most of our words and terminology are unfamiliar, words that might make someone double-take. Wait, what’s a chamfer? What you mean that tenon was left proud of the surface?
To be honest, I did not pay much attention to how drawers were put together as a kid. I don’t think that I really, truly noticed a dovetail joint until I was in my 20s. At this point, I was becoming interested in woodworking, and I saw an image of a cabinet that had dovetail joints in the upper corners of the carcass. Thinking back on it, they were not anything unusual, but I remember thinking that they looked impossibly intricate. I didn’t have any tools of my own, and my opportunities to make anything of wood revolved around availability of other people’s’ shops. I had a chance to take a two week class at Penland one summer. The focus was on hand tools, and I was super green to all of it. In the short amount of time of this class, my understanding of the craft increased 100,000%. We were allowed to be somewhat self-directed at the end of the class, and I chose to make a dovetail box. I owned no furniture at the time, and my sense of value and importance centered around my few possessions as a young adult, the most important of which was my bicycle. I really wanted to attach a pannier rack to my bicycle, but my frame did not have the necessary screws. Still, I had the thought that a dovetail box that would sit on a pannier rack would be the most amazing thing ever created. So, I made on anyway with the plans to give it to my brother.
My instructor at the time did not use dovetail joints in his work because he was a chairmaker, but he gave me enough information to get started. From there, I was mostly on my own to figure out how to cut the parts and make it all fit together. To be honest, I was overwhelmed with the complexity of it all. My first attempt at corner resulted in tails that looked like pins, and pins that looked like tails. I had messed up on my layout, and the result was a joint that had no mechanical advantage, so I had to start over. I did better the second time. Towards the end, I knew that the fit was not great, but I wasn’t really certain how to improve the situation. I couldn’t really see what was too tight, and I was nervous that some spots were already too loose. I did not understand the tolerances of it all. I was too nervous and eager to complete the project that I did not even dry fit the parts. I threw down some glue and hoped for the best with the clamps. I was disappointed when it came out of clamps and I realized that the grain split in many places where the fit was not good. That is the thing about craft, and maybe life more generally. We often learn more from our challenges and failures that we do our successes. It is is difficult to find the line of a good fitting mortise and tenon, until you make one that does not hold up over time or perhaps splits during assembly. This, I have learned, is the path of a craftsperson. Someone once referred to it as “paying your dues.”
In conversations today amongst other makers, there is an obsession with cutting this joint a certain way and as fast as possible. Time is money, sure, but dovetails are kind of forever. If you are taking the time to build something that has dovetail joints, that thing is probably gonna last until the house burns down. If you want them to look a certain, either devote your entire life force and focus to this process, or slow down and take your time. Joinery is difficult. On a single mortise and tenon, the difference between a good fitting joint and a poor fitting joint is only a few thousandths of an inch. With a corner of dovetails, you have that same relationship times how ever many tails are there. More importantly, if you are making something that has dovetail joinery, you are making something that has the potential to be in the world for a very long time. We would be better served as a community of makers to focus on whether or not we are each making something that is beautiful and useful. We should ask ourselves, are we selecting the appropriate grain for the application? Are the proportions between the different pieces balanced and harmonious? Is there a sense of life to the finished piece? Or, perhaps, does the final result feel like something that was made by a person? Are there marks, perfect and imperfect alike, left by the maker that give us a deeper sense of our humanity?
I enjoy cutting dovetails for a few reasons. I guess the first reason is that I still think that they have a mesmerizing visual quality to them. The process is also inherently satisfying. So many little steps amounting to something comprehensive. Also, the method of fitting one part to another is rewarding. I am not sure if that is dopamine, or maybe just my personality type, but it is something that I look forward to spending hours doing for the delayed satisfaction. Something I also think about while cutting this joinery is the continuation of the craft. We know that people have been using this method of attaching pieces of wood for thousands of years dating back to ancient Egypt. And here I am, in this little building cabin in mountains of North Carolina, using that same process. This gives me a sense of connection to all of the makers that have come before me, and all of those that might come after. On one hand, this makes me feel like a tiny, insignificant spec along a huge timeline, but it also reminds me of tapping into something that is much bigger than myself. Also, what a cool thought that someone might see something that I built long after my time, and that inspires them to pick up a chisel and see what they can do.
When I started thinking about what to build for this mudroom, I knew that I wanted this room to set a tone somehow. This is where all of mud happens, yes, but I liked the idea that this room would have something made with intention and care. This cabinet is now there to provide a sense of calm and order when we come home for the day, and it is there to serve as a testament to hard work and beauty anytime we get ready to leave. I think that these details matter more than we often realize.