More on Tails and Pins

The question of awls and knives came up several times in referring to the previous post on tails and pins in dovetailing. Awls used for marking out dovetails has become an issue with traditionalists and lines left in across the tails accepted as a relevant witness of tradition seems well accepted. I have seen this throughout my life in looking at old joiner and cabinet maker’s tool chests and some marked all the way across with a round semi-pointed awl while others used a knife wall. Still others used a knife and some used a cutting gauge. Awls were simple tools in general and a lot more accessible in the pre-pencil age when layout was with a steel marker. The awl was of course the obvious choice but not for neatness but more practicality. On building super structures such as timber framed buildings and large doors , door casings, paneling, frames and such, what’s called a scratch awl in the US and a striking awl in Great Britain was the method of marking out for joinery and identification of components. Chisels too were used for this type of marking.
Different books and articles expose the calibre of craftsmen past. Some woodworkers prefer a more puritan approach and thereby lay claim to traditionalism over our more modern expressions where dovetail and pin shoulders are cut within the recess to distinctly separate the boundaries of the recesses from the remaining material. This clean-shaven look to dovetails is therefore rejected in favour of retaining tradition. Whether that’s the right thing is of course individually appraised. I would most likely not do this as it is no quicker than simply pacing the knife wall with the knife really. I teach and use the combination of pencil followed by knife so that temporary marks laid on with the pencil can subsequently be delineated with the permanent knife-cut shoulder lines I need for perfecting my work. This was how I was trained and indeed many craftsmen from my era. Replicating an early piece for museum work in say a series, I might indeed preserve the authenticity of method and use a gauge or a striking awl or knife, but in my everyday work I find the knife line definitive and uncompromising.
Cutting dovetails takes practice to deliver quality work. Last week we taught another nine-day Foundational Course and that included making the Shaker candle box I first taught back in 1988. The class was full with 18 people making the box and for the main part, all of the dovetailed boxes were the first boxes everyone made. I have to say that most of the boxes were very well made using my methods and that each corner improved, with the last corner being the best. This is an important record for the students in that the box itself is secondary to the skills taught and subsequently mastered. I would not teach the awl or marking gauge method because of tradition though we do often discuss this as a historical consideration. I am often amused by visitors who pass through my workshops, look at the dovetails and say something like, “I cut dovetails once in school,” or, as happened last week, “I cut a dovetail by hand once. I just felt like I had to do just one so that I could say I had done it, but then I used a router after that.” He, as with many machinists, felt like that was the step to more advanced methods using machines when in reality he never reached any level of perfection or skill but of course substituted for the discipline that would have made him highly effective. I read another passage where the author talked about the experience of cutting a few dovetails as though that somehow qualified as a badge of merit. Describing the process as not that difficult, I realised that most people really fall short in discovering the art and craft of woodworking because they are always looking for something new and more stimulating. A bit like a a kid in a toy shop. A friend of mine once went home from the workshop I had just taught on dovetails and came back six months later to make a coffee table with dovetails in the construction. His dovetails were so perfect they amazed me. I asked him about them and he said he had gone home and his wife said they didn’t have the money but they need twenty Christmas gifts for relatives. They decided to make Shaker candle boxes for each present and that’s what they did. He said that by the time he had made the twenty boxes he had the process down. So, there are just six months left to Christmas.