Housed dovetail
Also called: dovetail housing, diminished housing
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A housed dovetail is a housing joint, a groove cut across the grain of one piece of wood to take the end of another, in which the groove's sides are angled in a dovetail shape rather than cut square. In Japanese joinery the same joint is called ari-dome.
Variants and their strength
The plain, square-sided housing is not the only option. Wearing (2010) reckoned that neither the dovetail housing nor a tapered version of it is an entry-level technique. A stopped dovetail housing, meaning one whose groove does not run out to the front edge of the piece, is machined easily with a router and, according to Noll (2002), outperforms a plain housing joint for load-bearing strength. A bare-faced dovetail housing, dovetailed on one side only rather than on both, and stopped at the front, offers a bit more strength than the plain version, according to Hayward (1950). A tapered dovetail housing has one end cut wider than the other, "so that it shall tighten as it goes in", as Ellis (1908) put it.
In drawers and carcase work
In a drawer, a dovetail-housing groove need not run the full height of the piece; it need only reach to just short of the drawer's top edge. At the drawer front, the groove needs an end lip left at the front edge, so that it avoids cutting into short grain, wood grain that runs across a narrow section of timber so that it snaps easily, near the front. In carcase construction, the box-like frame of a piece of furniture, an angled rebate, a stepped recess cut along an edge, matched to an angled frame, can be used instead of grooving in dovetail-housing fashion.
Marking, cutting and naming
A dovetail housing should be laid out with a marking knife rather than a pencil, so that the line cuts across the fibres of the wood rather than sitting on top of them; Fairham (1920) put it as marking out "so as to cut across the fibres of the wood". Housing joints are not always cut as dovetails. In scribe rule timber framing, a system for fitting each frame joint by hand to its own particular neighbours, the usual choice was a joint called the diminished housing. The English name 'dovetail' is said to come from the tenon's resemblance to a dove's fan-shaped tail; the Japanese name, ari-dome, meaning 'ant joint', draws the same comparison from an ant's pinched body, according to Seike (1970).