The Dog Strip

“The Dog Strip”…..sounds like it should be a street in Las Vegas. Just me? OK, focus Marc! The dog hole strip is made with the aid of a routing template and a pattern bit. The dog hole itself is positioned at a 2 degree angle to offset the force that will be applied to the dogs when in use. The dog holes also feature a small “shelf” that essentially serves as a depth stop so the dogs don’t go too deep into the bench.

After routing, a strip of 3/8″ thick maple caps it off. The end result is a perfectly-centered series of dog holes that are now ready to be glued to the bench top. Notice that the dog hole strip does not run the full length of the bench. This is so that the tail vise can do its job and the movable dog block will have some room to travel. The strip is glued to the bench with the aid of Dominos for alignment.

Front Laminate & Dovetails (Condor Tails)

The bench top is finished off by attaching the front laminate strip. The only tricky part about this is the fact that we need to tie the strip into the end cap. There are several options for how to accomplish this, including something as simple as a butt joint and lag bolts. But that’s no fun! So I decided to aim for the fences and make the connection with dovetails. I followed Jameel Abraham’s method, published in an article called “Condor Tails” in Popular Woodworking Magazine (August 2011). The method is right up my alley as it makes good use of both hand and power tools. The tails are cut first at the bandsaw. The pins are then cut into the end cap using a clever combination of chisels and a pattern bit in the router. You’ll have to buy the back issue or join the Guild to get the details on this method. The picture below shows the dovetails in the “rough state” with pencil marks and all. After it was glued into place and cleaned up, I was truly impressed with the results. A near piston fit! Kudos to Jameel on coming up with this method for what would normally be a pretty daunting joint.

Finishing Up The Tail Vise

With the front laminate glued into place, we can now route the grooves for the tail vise rails. The rails are then screwed into place and the dog block slides cleanly in the rails. It is interesting to note that the metal nut block shouldn’t make contact with any wood. If everything is working properly, it should slide back and forth making contact with the metal rails only. I didn’t mention it earlier, but when making the dog hole strip I was careful to include one extra dog hole. That one was reserved specifically for the movable dog block, which is installed here in the final step. The vise has incredibly smooth action and travels quickly. I think I’m going to like this!

The Dog Breeder

The only thing missing from my new bench top is the dogs themselves. They are fairly easy to make but it can be time-consuming. So I figured I would save some time by making a makeshift routing jig that I affectionately refer to as “The Dog Breeder”. Once the shape is cut, each dog receives a piece of 1/8″ stock that serves as a spring. A little fine-tuning with my smoothing plane and the dogs slide in and out of the dog holes with ease. When full retracted, you can see they sit just below the surface of the bench.

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Location: Fayetteville, NC

Amateur or Pro: Amateur

Finish Used: 8 Lacquer coats on top and shelves. Hand rub finish with pumice stone 2F/4F and Rotten stone.

Wood Species: Brazilian Cherry and Maple

Project Description:
My inspiration was blending 2 different types of wood. The original design was suppose to have dovetails joining the end grains together but since I could not get them right, a spline was used. Then I placed butterflies for the dovetails.

Project Description:
Dovetailing:
Top & bottom case (router-cut), drawers (router-cut), drawer dividers (router-cut), base (hand-cut)…I wanted to experiment with both methods. The hand-cut definitely look more refined, but it was nice to have the router/jig since I had so many dovetails to cut on the rest of the piece. The upper & lower case dovetails are hidden so it didn’t really matter. I think it would have looked a little nicer with hand-cut dovetails on the drawers.

Doors:
The raised/”bookmatched” panels were a first for me…the panels aren’t resawn bookmatch (I don’t have a bandsaw with resaw capabilities)…I just pulled a bunch of wood and spent a few hours making up the bookmatch (i.e., composing with grain)…that was a lot of fun

Door & drawer pulls:
The pulls are ebonized walnut (another first for me). The ebonizing process was easy…I found an article on the FWW website. I used a convex router bit to cut the profile.

Case backs:
Lower case back is made of ship-lapped poplar (another first!)…Upper case back is walnut plywood…I’m not a big fan of using plywood, but that was a lot of visible space to fill so I experimented with the plywood. If I had had the materials, I probably would have gone with ship-lapped walnut. That’s probably the main thing I’d redo on the piece. Isn’t there always something?

Something to note:
I had to make the doors twice. That was a bitter pill to swallow! The first set of door frames twisted on me bad. I couldn’t figure out how to fix them, so I tore the doors apart and rebuilt the frames. The original panels in the doors were just flat, so I decided on the new doors to do raised panels. It worked out great and made the door rebuild a tolerable process!

As a Guild member, here are some of the areas where Marc assisted me:
- Design advice on adding additional upper & lower moldings to the upper case. Compare the before & after. The additional moldings really give the piece more interest (texture) & balance.

- Advice on how to mount the door and drawer pulls (glued & doweled through as well as glued on the back-side of the pulls)
- Finishing advice – I basically used your “simple varnish finish” process using General Finishes “Arm-R-Seal”.

Guild members will remember this small excerpt from the Shaker Table series. Its just a taste of some of the fun we have in the Guild.

Dovetails: very few joints are held in such high regard. Not sure why exactly, but there seems to be a nearly universal love and adoration for this flying vermin-inspired interlocking joint. And I don’t care what anyone says, doves are just dirty pigeons in a lighter-colored outfit. To be fair though, the joint is beautiful, incredibly strong, and requires skill and attention to detail to cut by hand.

One of the most common variations of the dovetail is known as a half-blind dovetail. You’ll find this joint most often on drawer fronts where you don’t necessarily want to see the joint from the front. With a few tools, a little know-how, and a lot of patience, this beloved joint is well within your grasp.

And speaking of patience, what’s the rush people?!?! It seems like some folks feel that if they aren’t cutting their dovetails in three minutes, they aren’t doing it correctly. I say put the brakes on and enjoy the process. After all, isn’t that why you’re cutting them by hand? If I wanted them cut in just a few minutes, I’d keep a dedicated jig set up and knock them out with my router. Take your time…..be one with the wood……

If you want to see how to cut dovetails with a jig, check out When Dovetails Cry.

Here are a few products I use/recommend for hand-cutting dovetails. Your purchase helps support our show.

I’m building a toy box for my children with the sides made from walnut, the front and back from red oak, and the lid is a combination of the two woods. I really like the look of through dovetail joints down the entirety of the four corners of the box as it gives you a taste of each wood from every angle, but my problem comes in when I try to plan out the actual floor of the box. I would like to dado in the floor as I am going for a look that has no screws or hardware visible. It seems to me that if I dado all the way to the edges in order for the base to fit in undetected that I will then screw up my dovetail joints.

This is a common problem that develops in not only toy boxes, but boxes of all kinds like blanket chests, jewelry boxes and even drawers. If you run a groove all the way to the end of the board, it will be visible through the end grain of the dovetail. What an eyesore! I have a solution for you that will be a little more work, but the results are well worth it.

What you need to do is create what is known as a stopped groove. This is fairly easy to do with a router, a straight bit, and an edge guide. You can run the groove pretty close to the end of the board, but just don’t go all the way through. That way, you’ll see solid dovetails from the outside, but you’ll have a nice interior groove on the inside of the box.

I would love it if you could show a few of my recently made boxes. I am quite proud of them and I would like to see what some real woodworkers think about them. Either way negative or positive responses are always appreciated. The first box is Oak with dovetails. I used Dark Walnut Danish Oil and I left it without a top coat. The second box is Oak as well with miters and splines. I used Medium Walnut Danish Oil and top coated it wish paste wax. The third box is Maple with a 9/16 box joint. This one also has the Medium Walnut and a wipe on poly.

And here are some unique inlayed boxes submitted by Larry. I love the way the handle was incorporated into the design. Check them out:

I just wanted to show you the end result of the gift boxes I had made. I had asked you a few questions regarding their constructing/finishing, to which I thank you for your insight. I basically built them from a guide in Woodsmith magazine. I used my own ideas on materials though. I made the inlay first. I used black walnut and maple glued up to form a “blank” that I cut the inlay strips from. The cool part is, I got the black walnut from a pallet about 2 years ago. I had never seen black walnut used on a pallet before and have not seen it since either. The maple came from some old warped flooring that was being discarded from the school system I work for. The basic box is made from cherry as that has always been a favorite of mine. The top and bottom is plywood. I’m pretty sure it was a birch veneered plywood but I’ve had it laying around so long I don’t remember. I used the plywood because I wanted to be able to glue the tops and bottoms securely as I flocked the inside. By the way I also followed your advice by making up a “mock” box to practice flocking. It was one of the easiest things I ever did. All you have to do is follow the instructions they give you and the results are excellent. After the inlay was done I used the remaining inlay stock to make the handles.
Thanks again for your website and taking the time to do what you do. It is greatly appreciated!!!

I can’t believe it – the shoe cabinet is done! :) It’s been a long process. With me being such a newbie, and having just a bit of free time to devote each week, it’s taken me something like 6 months to complete! This was a real learning project. Many firsts for me: loose mortise and tenons, edge joining wider boards, flush drawers with half-blind and through dovetails, routed inlays, sliding doors, staining poplar, etc. I based the design on David Marks’ tool cabinet (Woodworks #503), but much larger and with drawers on top. I used poplar throughout, and walnut for the inlays and handles. Finished with a 2lb cut of shellac followed by General Finishes American oak gel stain and 3 coats of Arm-r-Seal.

One of the big lessons from this project is covering up mistakes, of which there were MANY! :) The biggest oops came when I was routing the mortises in the top — the router bit somehow slipped loose and punched right through the top. Not a happy woodworking moment!! After wrangling with ideas about patching the holes, making a new top, etc, I took your excellent suggestion of filling the hole with epoxy, and then routing a complete perimeter inlay over the top of it. Hey, I meant to do that! :) It turned out great!

I also really struggled with the doors. Not having a band saw, and unable to find any good 1/4″ plywood locally, my “beautifully figured” sliding doors are actually just 1/4″ MDF panels. I used the same gel stain and sorta dragged the rag across to produce a fakey wood grain :) For the dovetails, I started with an old rockler jig – and just like you, I ended up wanting to drive a truck over it. I ended up investing in the Leigh Super 18 – nice! After spending so long fine-tuning the half-blind fronts, I was stunned how easy the through dovetails were in comparison! :) Took a crazy amount of time, but I just love those dovetails.

Thanks again for all your help Marc. You’ve patiently answered every one of my emails and given me numerous suggestions which you can see reflected right in the completed project. And I can’t count how many times I’ve come back to your videos for advice, design ideas, the dovetails, edge-joining with biscuits, mortise and tenons, pairing, wiping finishes, etc, etc – even how best to measure and mark when putting the door handles on. Looking forward to the next project.

Most of you know by now that my schedule has been a little packed lately due to a long series of commissions. I promised you that once they were over, I would be able to focus nearly all of my efforts on The Wood Whisperer. And now its time to deliver. I am finally on the last of that series of projects and will be done within the next 7-10 days. This particular episode represents a taste of whats to come. With some new editing software, a new camera, and a little more knowledge and experience on my part, we are able to offer higher quality videos and higher quality content. The new format of the show represents what we would like to think of as “Season 2″. I hope you enjoy it.

I would have to say the most commonly requested episode so far has been dovetails. Handcut, machine cut, through or half blind……..you guys love your dovetails! Well, I have held off for a while because I wanted to make sure I did the process justice. This particular episode is a glimpse into the world of machine-cut through dovetails. Even though the episode is 30 minutes long, I feel like I just barely scratched the surface. The devil is in the details! And each jig differs in those little details. Fortunately, there are some common elements to all these jigs that make this episode useful to anyone, regardless of what jig you use. I happened to use what I consider to be the best jig on the market: the Leigh D4R.

No matter what jig you use or even if you cut them by hand, there’s no denying the “cool factor” surrounding dovetails. If you haven’t made them yet, they are easier than they look and it is certainly worth your time to learn the process. So watch the video and find out what it sounds like, when dovetails cry……….

***Error note*** Thanks to Steve and Brian in the comments section for bringing this to my attention. During the filming of the podcasts, I was using “props” for my cuts and consequently was not as careful with my organization as I should have been. Now you see why I use props. lol. I accidentally reversed the pins and tails. My rule is to cut the tails in the sides and the pins in the fronts and backs. I did the opposite in the video. I guess thats what happens when you are focused on filming and getting the right shot, instead of making proper dovetails. So don’t get confused. As long as you remember the rule (and you don’t try to make a show out of everything you do), you should be fine.