# hand cut dovetails



## jeffreysmith300 (Apr 14, 2013)

I’m currently planning my next project – a cabinet for a walk-in closet. Pretty simple cabinet with some shelves and a few drawers. For the drawers I’m planning on trying out dove tail joints by hand (I’ll make plenty practice joints on some old poplar first). For the real thing I was thinking about going with something like maple (soft or hard?). Does this sound reasonable?


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## BZawat (Sep 21, 2012)

Maple is perfectly acceptable. Hard & durable. Problem is hard maple is real tough on chisels, and soft maple is lousy to work with (in my opinion). I like to use rift sawn oak for drawer boxes. Hard but not difficult to work, stable and straight grained, and cheaper than quartersawn stock. Whatever you end up doing, be sure to post pics!


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## bladeburner (Jun 8, 2013)

Personally, I like to work soft maple; hard maple...not so much.
Hard maple is reason for my ID here!


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## Keith Mathewson (Sep 23, 2010)

Hard maple, soft maple doesn't make a great deal of difference. The large dovetails are in hard maple and the small ones walnut & poplar.


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