A lot of grown men ask me about my drawers. And though it should make me uncomfortable, I am happy to chat about my unusual-looking tail. Where did it come from? What’s it good for?
At the front of the drawer I use a half-tail at the bottom edge of the drawer side. Then I lay out and cut full tails above this half tail. And I always use a full tail at the top of the drawer.
I didn’t make this arrangement up. It’s a layout I’ve found on many English chests I’ve seen while hunting in antique stores for the last 20 years. The asymmetrical layout gives you some advantages, and it reduces the risk of things blowing up on you when you assemble your drawer. The only disadvantage? The layout is a tiny bit more complex – something I don’t even notice anymore.
The primary advantage is that you get a little more space in your drawer. By putting a half-tail at the bottom, you can sink a groove in that tail that will put your drawers bottom at the very bottom of the assembled drawer.
Yes, you can place the bottom’s groove at the bottom of the drawer if you put a full tail very near the bottom of the drawer. I’ve found that when I do this there’s a good chance that the half pin at the bottom will break out, especially if I’m going for a tight fit with my dovetails or working with woods that don’t compress much.
Another approach is to use full tails on the drawer – no half-tails – and then insert the bottom using drawer slips, which are little grooved strips of wood glued inside the drawer. That solution adds steps to the process and at least two extra parts to your assembly. Don’t get me wrong, I like drawer slips.
One more note: This half tail can also have a flat slope and look like a finger joint instead of a dovetail. That’s historically correct as well.
Hope you’ve enjoyed the quick tour of my drawers. Gift shop is to the left.
— Christopher Schwarz
Hi Chris-
Love the blog(s)
I think there is a reason you don’t see this layout much anymore-
*it’s unsightly and not proportioned right (subjective, i know, but to my eye….)
* it makes the drawer weaker- because there is no half pin at the bottom, the bottom front of the drawer “could” pull away
* you need a thinner bottom due to the layout and due to the fact that you don’t want the drawer running on the bottom when it is pulled in and out.
But, I am going to give this way a try and see for myself
John,
I see this layout all the time — on old work.
I don’t think this is a weaker construction. The drawer bottom is still in the groove in the drawer front. And there are still LOTS of tails above to resist shear forces. So I don’t see the problem.
Thinner bottoms (1/2″ thick or a little less) are better in my book. They are lighter. It’s pretty rare to break a 1/2″-thick drawer bottom under a typical load.
As far as its appearance goes, it looks like an English drawer to me. I never thought of it as unsightly….
Yes, but they’re ENGLISH drawers.
And as students of history we all know why the redcoats wore brown pants… So it wouldn’t show when their drawers blew out.
James – how does that explain the prediliction of rich Americans for travelling across the pond and buying up British antiques? They wouldn’t do that if the said antiques were a load of rubbish, would they?
Well, I was referring to clothing. If rich Americans insist on paying to fly somewhere else to buy soiled trousers, I’m afraid their predilections lie beyond my capacity to explain.
Do you still do the layout with dividers? Can you explain the process?
I like the way these look and was considering using them for my current project…. now Im going to.
Jeremy,
I lay them out with dividers. That’s the only way I lay out dovetails. You use three sets of dividers instead of two. One for the half pin at the top. One for the half tail at the bottom. And a third for the measurement of the full pin and full tail.
Now I have to go and get a third divider.
Whew, I was having issues figuring the layout too. I have yet to pour an adequate supply of coffee down my head. Thanks!
Blimey – the nation that put the first men on the moon (and brought them back safely, which is arguably an even greater achievement) is struggling to lay out a few dovetails?
Just eye ’em up!
Just checked the drawers in my chest of drawers (British origin I would guess) and what do you know!
This is the first time I have paid close attention to some guys drawers but I am happy to do so this time. With Mr. Schwarz permission I plan to adapt his research to my work.
What the half-tail at the bottom gives you over anything else is speed. You get to plow a through groove through the tailboard AND the pinboard without anything showing when assembled. If you don’t use the half-tail, and you don’t use drawer slips, you can achieve the same bottom, but you have to use stopped grooves in the pinboard. And stopped grooves are a wee bit slower to make with hand tools.
Moreover, I’m a little unsure about how much a craftsman in past centuries would care. Mostly, the point seemed to be to make it so that it doesn’t show in the front, and to make it strong so that it wouldn’t fall apart. If you were making something really, really expensive, you could think about the layout more (or more likely, use fully-blind mitered dovetails), but I get the feeling that most of this stuff wasn’t meant to be like that. But of course, tastes change, and the modern craftsman has to deal with that. That’s why (sigh) I’ve been using stopped grooves in the pinboard.
Couldn’t you just put the groove above the bottom (half) pin? Then you could still use a through groove. I thought that’s what Schwarz meant in the post when he talked about putting the full tail down low. The disadvantage of this approach is that either you make that bottom pin narrow and risk it breaking, or you make it fat and then your groove is forced up higher.
Yes. Like you said, I’ve found the narrow pin to be too fragile, and the fat pin is, well, fat, and as such, I’m not sure it actually “solves” the “problem.”
Is there a Leigh jig for that?
😉
Chris,
I’ve been running my bottom groove in the botttom tail for a long time. Since I practise dove tailing to stay competent, I’ll be experimenting with this layout next as soon as I get another two weeks on this new right knee. Thanks for the info.
Thanks for the additional explanation. It still looks strange to my eye, but I I’ll have to give it a go one of these days.
Hmmm…. very interesting! While I’ve done some dovetailing, I haven’t mastered the divider layout tricks yet. Is there an article on this? I don’t think I’ve heard of using 2 pair, let alone 3 pair. It is a bit asymmetrical, but not horribly so and the advantage of having the bottom groove as low as possible seems worth the effort.
Rascal, there was a thread on the UK Workshop forum a couple of weeks ago (title -“Why are they called dividers” in the Hand Tools section) which spent some time discussing the laying out of dovetails. That might answer your questions.
Rascal,
This might prove useful
http://theinquisitivewoodworker.com/wordpress/silverware-tray-%E2%80%93-laying-out-the-dovetails/
Richard
Thanks to both of you, David and rwdawson! I’ll look this up!
Chris,
In looking at this blog post and reading the various comments and blogs, one thing came to mind. I am curious, In general when you are researching old furniture or methods, when you find multiple examples of an item such as the half tail on this English styled drawer, how do you know if it was the “standard way”, “obsolete way”, or “improved way” of making the item you are researching. Unfortunately the items you research to make do not have a model #/ type # such as the Stanley planes or MF Langdon mitre box. The fact that a person found a bunch of designs that happened to be the obsolete method of crafting an item and started copying them in their own projects rather then the “improved way” has always bothered me. I am sure the craftsmen that preceded us were on the constant lookout for ways to improve the items they were making.
When you choose to use a design from a former era in your own work how do you ascertain if this is the ” improved way”?
Larry,
Cutting dovetails by hand is the “obsolete” way.
To answer your question, I actually separate joinery into “common practice” and “idiosyncratic” when I examine furniture. The common practice stuff is what you see in the old books and in the wild. The idiosyncratic stuff is found only in the wild and is particular to a region, period or even maker.
I use “common practice” joinery for stuff of my own design. For a reproduction of a piece, I’ll use whatever the original maker used.
This dovetail layout scheme is definitely “common practice.” You will see this in lots of books and in old work.
Hope that answers your question.