The hand-cut dovetails checklist
· 2 min read
Oil finishes are forgiving, easy to repair and age beautifully. Good furniture should last longer than the person who made it. There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version. A friend once described drawers as hushed work, and the phrase stuck.
Before and after
The best advice I got was just to slow down. I keep a short list of things to try next; milling lumber is near the top. The first five weeks were largely about unlearning. You can get unexpectedly far with a marking gauge and some patience. Good joinery is largely a series of small, unglamorous decisions.
The middle part
Hand tools are slower, quieter and strangely calming. Most of the work happens before any cutting starts. The shift showed up bit by bit, then all at once.
The small things matter less than the routine of paying attention.
In practice
I keep a short list of things to try next; planing boards is near the top. Nothing here requires a card scraper, though it does make things easier. The first two weeks were largely about unlearning. Below are a few jottings, roughly in the order I found out them.
The result is not perfect, but it is honest. I would rather do one thing deliberately than five things fast. For a long time I treated dovetails as an afterthought.
I keep a short list of things to try next; sharpening is near the top. The trick, if there is one, is to leave sufficient room for errors. Half of the work is deciding what to leave out.
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