sliding dovetail question

[Scott Jungdahl]

I'm building a dresser for my grandson. Shaker style. I plan on using sliding dovetails for the drawer dividers.
Assuming thickness around 7/8" what width and angle dovetail bit would you suggest.

[Julie Moriarty]

The angle should be 7⁰ on the low end, 15⁰ on the high end. What you should be most conscience about is the depth of the sliding dovetails. Too deep and the joint could seize up before fully seated. Of course if you only apply glue to the last inch or two, seizing usually isn't a problem.

As for depth, I've made sliders as shallow as 1/4" on table legs and they turned out rock solid.

[Brian Holcombe]

For sliding dovetails I use 14 degrees but I would go
out as far as 18 degrees. There is no short grain consideration here and the benefit is that the batten pulls tighter into the groove.

If I cut them at 7 degrees, even very tight (pounded in with a hammer) I could come by and rip them out of their mortises by hand.

[Steve Boring]

Will Neptune has an article about this in FWW #276. He doesn’t mention an angle, but goes through several approaches.

I recently built a dollhouse and used tapered sliding dovetails to join the floors to the side walls. I used 7 degrees and it seems very solid. The boards were 10” wide, which is why I tapered the joint. I used the paring block method mentioned in the article. I scribbled with a pencil on the pin as I was fitting the joint. I hammered the joint together, then took it apart and checked the scribbles. The smeared marks were the high points.