Picture Frame

With half-blind houndstooth dovetails

I don't usually like dovetails as a design element, but houndstooth dovetails can be pretty stunning if done well. This present for my wife was my first attempt at cutting houndstooth dovetails.

It is made out of Mahogany and Cherry. It is finished with spray varnish but I will probably strip that and replace it with an oil finish when I have a chance.

Determining the dimensions and proportions to get the houndstooth dovetails right was actually fairly challenging, since they need to be tailored to the width of the pieces and number of pins/tails desired.

Cutting the tails was straightforward. The pins were much more challenging. Even though I went half-blind on the pins, there was not enough support for this short grain and it was really fragile.

I most likely won't do cross-grain dovetails in future projects but it turned out okay in the end.