We don’t cut dovetails for no reason. There’s always a reason to cut dovetails.

The reason usually boils down to casework, sometimes called carcase work.The carcase of a woodworking project, or case, is the box that has fixed top, bottom, and front and left sides — and usually a back. The front is usually where there’s either a door, or an open front. Sometimes the carcase has horizontal and vertical dividers, to create shelves, or to support drawers. Then you either get a bookcase, or a bureau. If it has doors, you might have an armoire or a cabinet. If it has a partly fixed front (like drawers down below), a fixed back, fixed sides, and a liftable top, it might be a blanket chest. Or it might be something like what I’m building now, a Dutch tool chest.

Carcase Work

In this (car)case, I’m trying to construct a floor with two sides and a back, with a couple of rigid bars across the front. There will be a hinged lid, providing access to the top compartment. A hinged panel on the front will give access to two lower shelves. I may eventually make small drawers for the bottom part, so I can store two layers of stuff.

Why? Basically, I’m tired of having an overflowing tool chest, with specialty tools on the floor around it, and stacked on top of it, and in more boxes under it.  When I thought about what I needed to be able to do with my woodworking tools, I thought…

• They have to be portable, because I don’t have a shop; 
• They have to be accessible and not piled on top of one another, so they stay sharp; 
• Each tool has to have a place; 
• The case has to be transferable from inside to outside relatively easily (no shop). 

Solutions?

Then I thought about what I had seen as solutions to the “how to you store your tools?” problem. When I looked at options, there are four big projects for wood tool storage systems.

1. A Studley-style wall-mounted cabinet.
   • Can’t do that, no wall in my shop because no shop
2. English joiner’s chest, aka the Chris Schwarz Anarchist’s Tool Chest
   • Practically bomb proof.
   • But… sits on the floor of a shop, and
   • doesn’t move well, at least not where I live.
3. Chest of stiles and panels.
   • Beautiful but not portable.
   • And needs skills I don’t yet have. 
4. Dutch style tool chest

And then I thought about Dutch style tool chests a lot. These are slant-top desks, basically, which means I’m not going to use it as a horizontal storage (totally a risk with me). They also have ten dovetails, four dadoes, a couple rabbets, many chamfers, maybe some beading plane work — and a lot of nails and some screws, and some drilled pilot holes.  Totally in my wheelhouse.

And portable. Dutch Tool Chest it is.

At Least I’ve Fenced Before

Once the dovetails were cut, it was time to do the next step, which was to cut the dadoes. Dadoes, I understand, are grooves cut in a wooden board so that they go across the grain (Grooves are cuts in a board that go with the grain, and are commonly used for things like drawer bottoms).

And to make a dado, you need a fence.

Now, I am no Inigo Montoya, but I have fenced before. This was a new kind of fencing for me, though. I was introduced to it by Megan Fitzpatrick in her book Dutch Tool Chests, which is my bible for this project. Basically, you use a tape measure to mark where the dado should be, strike a line across your board, and then attach another board with a very straight edge directly over that line. You can use a marking knife to score that line…. but mostly, you run your saw blade directly against that clamped wooden board, and use it as a fence to slice through the woodgrain and dig out a 1/4″ channel with a chisel. That 1/4″ lip on the left and right sides of the case, plus some nails in the sides, will hold the shelf in place.

Time to get Shelfish

Once the dadoes are cut (two shelves, so two dadoes) in one board, it’s time to do the other side of the chest. This requires lining up the two boards, marking out the lines of your cut dadoes on one side, and transferring those marks to the inside of the other side of the chest. Which I did.

And now the goal becomes to cut two 1/4″ channels, on the inside surface of the other wall of the chest, so that both sides will hold up a shelf running horizontally through the middle of the box.

I managed to cut the dadoes properly, and the shelf edges fit in them.

What they don’t do in those 1/4″ gaps… is lie flat. I’ve cut my shelves overly long (the woodworking term is “proud”) and now I’m going to have to plane down end-grain (with a risk of a kind of tear-out of wood fibers called spelching [anyone notice how wonderful the words of woodworking are??]) in order to get the shelf ends straight and square and true to one another.

Case Closed?

So, we’re not yet at the point of closing the case. Obviously. We still have a back to put on, and some sides; and oh yeah, I still have to cut a 30°-angle into the boards (in the right direction on both sides) so that I know where the top of the chest is going to lie. So it’s going to be a while before the case is closed.

On the other hand… I’m pretty pleased so far. I have ten dovetails and four dadoes cut out. They’re all in the right places, and cut at (more or less) the correct angles. The shelves need some work, but they’re in the right ballpark of size; some trimming will bring them into line, and will teach me how to do some work with my planes that I really need to practice.

Growing Skills & Next Steps

If the weather cooperates tomorrow and through the weekend (currently expected), I may be able to do my next several steps: trim the shelves to fit, glue up the case, nail the shelves in place, and attach a backboard or two. I’m worried, though, because I think that one of the challenges of tomorrow is going to be planing down the end-grain of both ends of both shelf-boards. I have no shooting board (a jig or appliance for trimming the end-grain of boards), and I may have to build one. But all the plans that I’ve seen for them, are set up for waist-high workbenches… and that’s not what I have.

In the midst of my dado cutting today, I learned a few new skills that I hadn’t tried yet. One was setting up a fence for my dado saw (so that its teeth would stay exactly perpendicular to the wood it was cutting, and slice a trench down into the walls/sides of the chest. Another was repairing my saw bent, when it got knocked over by a gust of wind (it’s still broken, though, and I think it’s destined for the burn pile at this point. Still, it taught me to make mortises and tenons). And I also discovered/learned from Megan Fitzpatrick how to get really tight dadoes for my shelves on future projects, and I think I see how to apply that trick to other projects, like mortises and tenons and bridle joints, for a new saw-bent. I didn’t necessarily figure it out in time to do it for THIS project, but I did realize the trick she was talking about halfway through this cutting project.

Some more learning to do, obviously.