Sliding dovetail joint
A sliding dovetail joins one board across another with a dovetail-shaped tongue on the end of one piece, slid into a matching dovetail-shaped groove in the face of the other. Once it is in, the two can’t be pulled apart across the groove, only slid out the way they went in. It is used to fit shelves into case sides, to join a rail to a leg, or to hold a batten across a tabletop.
Cutting the groove
The groove is usually cut with a router and a dovetail bit, guided by a fence or a straightedge clamped to the work. Clearing most of the waste first with a straight bit or a dado blade leaves less for the dovetail bit, which has to cut at full depth in one pass: raising a dovetail bit in steps would change the groove’s width.
Cutting the tongue
The tongue is cut with the same dovetail bit in a router table, taking one pass on each face of the board against the fence and creeping the fence over until the tongue slides into a test groove. Because both parts are cut with one bit, the angle matches automatically, and only the width needs adjusting.
Fit and length
A long sliding dovetail gets harder to push home as it goes, because the glue grabs and the wood swells. One answer is to taper the joint slightly along its length, or to make it a stopped joint so it is hidden at the front edge. Test the fit dry along the full length before gluing.
Calculators and charts
Related joints
Sources
- Rockler, Woodworking furniture joinery: butt joints, mortise and tenon, dovetails, read 2026-11-07
Proportions marked as a traditional rule are shop tradition, not measurements. This site gives no joint-strength numbers: the published tests each used a different rig.
How sources are counted and labelled: how we source these numbers.