An exceptional dovetail
Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
I know, you are probably thinking if Bill thinks that is an exceptional dovetail he needs to start using Blue Tape. The rest of the story.....
Interruptions in the midst of dovetailing are to be avoided. I was making the pins for this drawer, foolishly, while having fiber Internet installed. Yes! Finally out here in the out back we have fiber cable strung down the road last week. This cable came 2000' overhead from the road, then underground to the house, then through the foundation. It needed to miss underground power to fence charging station, water line, septic tank line and when boring through the brick wall miss the stove power line to wind up in the basement and not the living room. It worked out perfectly.
The dovetail did not. When I went to assemble I realized I had marked the pins from the top of the drawer side and not the bottom. They were cut upside down. What to do? Making another quarter sawed side was not going to be easily done.
Here is the exceptional part, overstated just a bit. I had sawed the dovetails so symmetrically/evenly on the drawer side that the drawer front pins were almost in alignment with side tails even though they were marked from the opposite side of the drawer side.
I decided to treat this joint as a pins first joint. I aligned the drawer front pins on the mis-cut side and marked. At most the alignment was off by a line width. The result is shown in the picture.
I this case I will patch the worst of the gaps and nobody will ever notice.
And that's back when the odds were not so absurd as now.
