These are three good projects to practice hand cutting dovetails:

1.  The dovetail tray is easy in that it doesn’t use much wood and doesn’t take much time, so if a mistake is made it isn’t too hard to start over.  There are only 2 dovetails per corner which makes it go quickly.  I used oak and walnut and a simple oil and then shellac finish.

2. A pine chest isn’t too hard to do either because the pine is easy to saw and relatively forgiving if the joints are cut slightly on the tight side.  This is made from eastern white pine with oil and shellac for a finish.  No tape measures were used (or harmed) during the construction as this sort of thing can be laid out by hand.

3. The shaker step was made from mango and yellow heart and was a fun project to experiment with different more decorative dovetail layouts.

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