Fixing Dovetails with Gaps
Even with practice mistakes happen. It’s inevitable. I’ve been working on a new tool tote, and it uses mitered dovetails to hold a tongue and groove panel bottom. I messed up the cut on the very last pin, and left myself with a nice gap all the way around the pin.
There are a lot of strategies for fixing this. Among them:
- If the gap isn’t too large, try and plane/break out the end grain to cover the gap.
- Glue and sawdust is great for covering a dovetail that’s going to be painted over.
- End grain wedges to match the end grain of the pin.
In this case, I went with the third option. I grabbed a sharp chisel and an offcut from the same board, and started splitting wedges. I’m no expert, but split enough wedges and you’ll get lucky with a few that fit just right. Add some glue, and very gently start tapping them in with a mallet. Go slow! Eventually the wedge will get stuck and start breaking, but that’s okay. Give it a few minutes for the glue to get tacky, then flush it up with your chisel before the glue completely dries.
The repair won’t be invisible, but since the end grain of the wedges will still soak up your finish, it’ll match better in the end after finish. I’ve not gotten to the finishing stage on this project yet, but it’ll likely be oil and then shellac.
The Gap
Splitting Wedges
Tapping in The First Wedge
Cleanup
The Second Wedge
The Final Wedge
The Result
Carcass Assembled!
