Machine cut dovetails

[John T Barker]

Does anyone know when dovetails started to be cut by machine in this country? (An aquaintance is trying to determine the age of a desk.)

[Jerry Miner]

Industrial Revolution---sometime in the 1890's

[Mike Henderson]

I think mechanical methods started being used for furniture making is the early 1800's. I'm pretty sure I've seen pictures of a dovetail machine that went back to mid 1800's or even a bit earlier, maybe 1830 to 1840.

Mike

[Peter Quinn]

Here's (http://www.harpgallery.com/library/dovetails.htm) a little page about the subject.

[Jerry Miner]

It looks like a machine was available in 1867:

Old machinery forum (https://forum.canadianwoodworking.com/showthread.php?48872-Who-was-the-first-to-make-the-automatic-machine-cut-dovetail-machine)

[Keith Weber]

Not related to dovetails in America, but an interesting thing I saw in an Egyptian museum in Turin, Italy about 10 years ago. It was a wooden box with dovetailed joints that was so old that it blew me away that they had dovetailed joints back then. I took a picture including the written description so that I could research it later, but unfortunately my camera back then wasn't the best and I found that the text was blurry when I got home. My memory isn't the best, but I've always had 3000 years old in my head. I just blew up the blurry text, I can just make out "XVII or XVIII Dynasty", which would put the age of the box between 3313 and 3595 years old. Amazing!

I'm guessing that they were hand cut -- I'm not entirely sure you could buy a router and a Leigh Jig back then.

321736

[Brian Holcombe]

That's awesome! There was a post up on wood net recently of some incredibly intricate work from egypt. The Egyptians turned out some impressive woodwork, take the chariot for example which was built to be super light and strong, they were built well enough that we have surviving examples 4000 years later.

[Scott DelPorte]

I wonder if they used hide glue on that box too. :)

[Tom M King]

Old machinery catalogs and advertisements come up on ebay regularly. I just looked, and the oldest one up now is 1868. I was looking for the same question on sash relishers a while back, and found a comprehensive catalog of woodworking equipment that had one in an 1844 catalog. I didn't look for a dovetailing machine then, but it wouldn't surprise me.

[Vijay Kumar]

A few years ago I had the chance to see the King Tut exhibition. In that there was a box fully dovetailed. And yes that was about 3000 years old (1300 BC).

[Brian Holcombe]

I wonder if they used hide glue on that box too. :)

Quite possible, I found a Wikipedia on hide glue which says it the earliest written instructions for creating hide glue is 2000 BC, and it has been found in Egyptian tombs.

[Doug Hepler]

Very interesting article. Thank you, Peter