Dovetailed Box

This dovetailed box is a great way to practice dovetails and some hand tool skills.

- By Albert Kleine

I love boxes. They're quick to make. They’re useful. They make great gifts. And, you can do fun fancy stuff like add marquetry on top. I love boxes enough that I wrote an entire book on them (shameless plug for “Complete Starters Guide to Making Wooden Boxes”).

For this box, I start by milling all stock to the dimensions specified in the cutlist. Some of the dimensions are kept intentionally oversized because we’ll trim them to fit later. Because of that, make sure you start with the cutlist dimensions and not the final ones.

Decide which two pieces will be your tailboards and which will be your pinboards. Before getting started, I like to ensure that opposing sides of my boxes are exactly the same length. I’ll stack the tailboards (or pinboards) and feel with my fingers to see if they are the same length. If not, I'll trim one at a shooting board until everything is good to go.

Gather your tailboards and set a marking gauge to project a bit more than the thickness of your stock (in this case, 1/2"). Scribe a line on the faces and edges of the tailboards and only on the face of the pinboards.

Clamp a tail board in your vise with the end facing up. Set a marking gauge to 3/16" and strike a line across the ends of the board, pressing the head of the gauge against the edge of the board. Set a pair of dividers to open 13/16" and place one point into one of the gauge marks you just made. Set the other point into the end of the board and make a mark. Rotate and “walk” the dividers along the edge of the board, making light marks with the points as you go. Repeat this process, starting from the gauge mark at the other edge of the board. When you are finished, you should end up with three equally spaced tails.