How much time to cut dovetails?

Let me start off by saying that I know this is a dumb question... but I have to ask just out of plain curiosity.

I don't do a ton of hand tool work, but I like to cut dovetails by hand as much as possible. I've recently been working on a shaker-style sideboard, and currently making 3 drawers for it. I prepped the stock abut a week ago (fronts from 4/4 stock, sides and back re-saw to ~1/2", planed, cut to size, etc.). This past weekend, I did the layout for the first drawer, cut and fit the dovetails. When I looked at the clock, I was surprised to see that it took me almost 2.5 hours to finish one drawer. No big deal -- I hadn't cut dovetails for a long time, so I was sure the next drawer would be a little faster. Nope. The next drawer took just as long, though it is quite a bit better in terms of little gaps, saw over-runs, etc., and my process seemed more efficient. 3rd drawer yet to come, so I guess I'll see if i get any faster.

Woodworking is a hobby for me and I truly enjoy the process, so not really a problem at all if it takes 10 times as long as it has so far -- BUT this does have me wondering how long _should_ this sort of operation take? For reference, the drawers are roughly 4.5" deep -- half-blind dovetails in the front with a 1/4" overlay, full dovetails on the back. Picture of drawer #1:

Attachment 395697

Material is hard maple, so I do end up going back to the strop frequently with my chisels, but honestly I think this would take me about the same time in something easier to work.

So -- how much time would you expect this type of drawer to take you from joinery layout to finished joints?

--Dan

2 & 1/2 hours is fine. Thats in my ballpark. I am confident if we did drawers daily it would be a fraction. For Neanderthals the journey is as important ( or even more so ) than the destination.

Dan,

Couple things to put in your favor when you want to work with hand tools occasionally. First; wood choice. Hard maple is not my choice for drawer sides, if at all, because I don't like working with it. If you desire a harder wood, something like quarter sawn ash would do better.

Flat sawn is harder to work with than rift/quarter sawn.

Straight grained is much easier to work with than something with runout or figure.

I prefer to keep the interesting or delicate woods for the outside of the project.

Next, practice a lot more. The more you work with hand tools the more the work begins to shorten. \

Chop by riding the bevel. This helps to excavate work rapidly, most people who don't use handtools often (at least those who I have observed) chop with the back of the tool, this drives the chisel in toward the end grain rather than it does carry the waste away.

The less often you pare, the quicker you will be. Paring consumes the majority of the time needed for fitting joints. It is also the most error prone aspect of hand tool work.

If you can, stack everything in your favor.

Wood for drawer sides, i.e. secondary wood, was typically chosen for 3 qualities: stability, ease of working, and cheapness. Unfortunately hard maple scores low on all 3 counts. You can certainly use it if you want, but do it consciously, not because it someone else used it or it was lying around.

Traditionally drawer sides got made out of woods like white pine, poplar, soft maple, or similar woods. Each region has its go-to secondary wood(s), something that is cheap, stable, readily available in good quality and quantity, and is easy to work, which is why secondary wood will be different in New England, vs the South, vs Britain, vs Sweden, vs Japan. Secondary wood choices can also change over time, as new sources appear, and old ones dry up.

Frank Klaus has a good video on hand chopping dovetails in the context of a production shop, which associated tips on holding the chisel, work position, etc.

Things like your beautiful drawer take me a lot of time, because I am savoring it and because I don't want to blow it. A couple hours seems about right, but I have never timed it. If I am making a shop storage, usually out of poplar, I'll intentionally use a much coarser saw and have at it, curious about how expeditiously I can knock it out. The difference is tremendous. Need a storage box? Ready, set, go!

In 2011, I set about timing different dovetailing methods (mostly clearing out waste) when building two campaign chests comprising a total of 12 drawers. These drawers had half-blind fronts in Jarrah and a softer wood for the remainder. Drawer slips and solid wood bottoms.

I noted at the end of the build, after the last drawer was completed:

By the time I reached the point of building the drawers I knew I had to find an efficient way of clearing the waste from the Jarrah sockets of the drawer fronts. This wood is seriously hard – chopping out the carcases was really a lot of hard work, and I did not look forward to chopping out the sockets for the drawer fronts.
Over the first few drawers I experimented with a few systems. At the start each drawer carcase - that is, the drawer sides plus slips, but minus the drawer bottoms – took me around 4 ½ hours to complete. The last half of the drawers required about 2 ½ hours each.



http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furnitu...l_5042677f.jpg

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furnitu...l_590ca66b.jpg


Link: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furnitu...tDovetail.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

It’s the paring that takes the most time. Work on your sawing and marking and your time will come down considerably.

As Brian & others noted, there is a reason most furniture makers use softer woods for drawer boxes.

But I think what you're experiencing is something we all go through - at least those of us who do not build furniture on a daily basis by hand. I think most guys who are proficient and practiced up could do those drawers in less than an hour.

That said, I love hand tool work, too but there often times when I have to make a decision about power tools vs. hand.

I value my time and all said and done, when the piece is finished only I will know the difference in hand cut dt's.s.

Its no wonder a lot of antique furniture looks like a caveman did the drawers.......

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Robert Engel

Its no wonder a lot of antique furniture looks like a caveman did the drawers.......

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You are darn right. I think much hand tool work of 250 years ago shows irregularities that today in the machine era we are not comfortable with.

lovely work

And..for those that only dovetail the front corners....there still a LOT to be done to complete a drawer......grooves for a bottom to slide into, dados for the back of the drawer to be housed in. I never have set a "timer" on drawer building....causes one to watch the clock, get in too big of a hurry...and make mistakes...Drawer gets done, when it gets done, period.

Thanks for all of the comments. I guess I'm not slow enough that moss will grow around me, so I'll take that :). I'm definitely in the "it takes as long as it takes" camp with woodworking, but it's also nice to have some kind of baseline for comparison.

I've watched Frank Klaus and Rob Cosman do their 3-minute dovetail many times, but even better to watch them with thoughts like "chop by riding the bevel" in mind.

As far as drawer material, I definitely agree that hard maple is not ideal. I normally use poplar as my secondary wood since it's cheap and easy to work. For this project, I gave myself a somewhat arbitrary list of rules to follow just to make it more interesting (enjoy the journey sort of thing) and one of those was "hard maple for everything". No plywood. No fasteners allowed except for attaching the top to the case and hinges for the doors. No real reason behind any of them -- just a challenge to keep my mind thinking through other ways of solving problems. I'm not a huge fan of hard maple, but my wife loves it so I've decided to just embrace the fact that I will be working with it quite a bit. Other than being rough on chisels and darn near impossible to plane with no tear-out, I guess it's OK.

--Dan

2.5 hrs does not sound bad to me, I might even take longer although I have never timed it and tend to get distracted and putz around mid project. I am sure people doing this all the time would be much faster. I think the real key for speed is good sawing and good layout on the dovetail component of it.

In one of my build posts there was mention of "five or six day dovetails."

Take the time to do it right as you do not want to spend the time to do it over.

jtk