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This project costs almost nothing and teaches more than anything else in the catalog. A small box is where you learn hand-cut dovetails, because the stakes are low and the repetitions are short.
Your first set will be gappy. So will your second. Make the box anyway — a box with imperfect dovetails is still a box someone will keep things in for forty years, and gaps close up with a little sawdust and glue.
Saw to the line, chop to the line, don't pare 'just a bit more' — that's how a snug joint becomes a loose one.
| Item | Qty |
|---|---|
| Walnut, 4/4, resawn to 1/2"One nice board. Box sides want quiet, straight grain — save the wild figure for the lid.≈ about 5 ft of 3/4" × 6" board | 2 board feet |
| Cedar or maple, 1/4", for the bottomAromatic cedar is the traditional choice — it smells wonderful every time the box is opened.≈ about 1 ft of 3/4" × 6" board | 0.5 board feet |
| Wood glue | 2 oz |
| Small brass hingesBuy decent ones. Cheap hinges on a hand-cut box is a sad combination. | 2 each |
| Clear interior finish (hardwax oil or wipe-on poly) | 4 oz |
| Sandpaper, assorted grits | 4 each |
A board foot is a volume, not a length: 144 cubic inches, or a piece 1″ thick by 12″ wide by 12″ long. The “≈” note beside each row shows roughly how much 3/4″ × 6″ board that works out to.
Overall cost: $$. Lumber prices vary by region, species, and season, so we give a band rather than a figure we would only be pretending to know.
| Part | Qty | T × W × L |
|---|---|---|
| Box sides (long)Black Walnut | 2 | 1/2" × 4" × 10" |
| Box sides (short)Black Walnut | 2 | 1/2" × 4" × 6" |
| Bottom panelAromatic CedarFloats in a groove. Do not glue it — even a small panel moves. | 1 | 1/4" × 5 1/4" × 9 1/4" |
| LidBlack WalnutUse your best-figured piece here. It's the face of the box. | 1 | 1/2" × 6" × 10" |
Buy 3 boards at 8 ft.
1 board
1 board
1 board
Assumes 8 ft stock, a 1/8" saw kerf, and buying each part at its own width. Change the board size or kerf on the full board plan →
Get all four sides to a consistent 1/2" thickness, flat and square. Consistent thickness matters enormously for dovetails — the tails on one board must meet the pins on another exactly.
Mark the inside face and the top edge of every piece. Label them: front-left, front-right, back-left, back-right. You will absolutely lose track otherwise, and cutting tails on the wrong face is a rite of passage you can skip.
Set your marking gauge to the exact thickness of the mating board — not 'about 1/2 inch', the actual measured thickness.
Scribe all the way around both ends of every board. That scribed line is where you chop to, and its depth gives your chisel a wall to register against. A pencil line cannot do this job.
Lay out the tails on the two long sides. A 1:6 slope for hardwood — or just eyeball it, honestly, nobody measures the angle of a dovetail by eye and notices.
Saw down to the baseline, staying on the waste side of the line, every time. Consistency matters more than perfection: an evenly-sloped set of slightly-wrong tails looks intentional, a mix of good and bad ones looks like an accident.
Chop out the waste from both faces, working to the scribed baseline. Never chop past it.
This is the step everyone rushes and everyone regrets. Stand the tail board on the end of the pin board, aligned perfectly, and knife around every tail.
Use a knife, not a pencil. A pencil line has width, and that width is your gap.
Square the lines down the face to your baseline, and shade the waste so you don't saw the wrong side.
Saw down on the waste side of your knife lines. Chop out the waste.
Go slightly *under*-cut on the inside — a hollow in the middle of the joint nobody will ever see, so the outside edges close tight. Nobody looks inside a dovetail. Everybody looks at the seam.
Push the joint together by hand. It should go most of the way with firm hand pressure.
Do not assemble it fully to 'check'. Each test fit compresses the fibers a little; assemble a dovetail joint dry three or four times and it will be loose when you finally glue it.
Too tight? Pare a whisker from the pins. Never from the tails.
Cut a 1/4" groove near the bottom of all four sides, positioned to fall *inside* a tail so the groove doesn't show on the outside.
Glue: a thin coat on the tails only. Slide the bottom panel in dry — do not glue it in. Clamp gently, check for square, and check the box sits flat.
Any small gaps: mix fine sanding dust from the same walnut with a little glue and press it in. It disappears.
Plane the lid to fit with a consistent reveal all round. Mortise the hinges into the back edge — shallow and precise; a proud hinge holds the lid open.
Plane or scrape the dovetailed corners flush. This is the moment you see whether it worked, and it's a genuinely good feeling.
Shellac or hardwax oil, 3 coats, sanding lightly at 320 between. Walnut under shellac is one of the best-looking things in woodworking.
Then go build another one. It'll be much better.
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