Do side boards of a dovetail joint need to be same thickness?

[Dave Rosner]

I’m building a hanging wall toolchest and just milled up all the tops and sides of the main cabinet and two doors. I was pretty proud of myself and then jointed the edges and started to layout the boards that I need to edge glue to make the side and top panels wide enough. That’s when I realized after i glue up these boards I will probably need to flatten then again and will lose some thickness in the process.

I’m going to do hand cut dovetails and I’m wondering if the tops and sides are slightly different thickness will it throw off anything? Ultimately I will hand plane the sides and top to make the dovetails nice and flush. But if the sides differ by more than 16th then it could be a lot of planing.

Does It matter or do I need to mill all the final glued up pieces exactly the same thickness in my planner?

[Mike Henderson]

You can make dovetails with the two boards of different thickness - no problem. It's nicer if you have two marking gauges to do it. You set one to the thickness of one board and the other to the thickness of the other board. Just be careful that you mark the boards correctly - that you use the right one on the right board.

I'm assuming you're doing through dovetails here.

Mike

[Phil Mueller]

As Mike said, no problem. Use one marking guage to set the thickness of the side panel and transfer that to the top panel for the base line. Use the second marking guage to set the thickness of the top panel and transfer that to the side panel as the base line. You can certainly do it with one marking gauge, it's just easier with two.

[Jim Koepke]

All four sides could be different. One just has to remember or mark which pieces mate to which pieces.

For a hanging cabinet it may be obvious, but just a reminder to have the vertical sides with the tails and the top and bottom with the pins.

jtk