Dovetails

Dovetailing is the tongue-in-groove technique carpenters use to join boards at an angle. The grooves in 18th century dovetails were particularly wide, as much as three eighths of an inch. Although dovetails continued to be made by hand through the middle of the nineteenth century, tools and skills grew finer, and some examples made in 1830 or later may be as small as one eighth of an inch.