On 25 Nov 2004 07:44:41 -0800, (Gary DeWitt) wrote:

I noticed in
looking at some really beautiful dovetail joints the still aparant
marking line along the bottom of the tails.

Many of those are in routed dovetails. If there's a knife mark _and_ a
pencil line to highlight it, then it's almost guaranteed.

Some years ago, one of those funny orange-skinned chaps wrote / said
on telly that the way to spot an antique hand-cut dovetail was to look
for the marking-out line. Since then they're one of the most faked up
gewgaws around.

Originally dovetails, like all joinery, were hidden and the only place
you'd see them was on the sides of a drawer. No-one looked here
(actually opening the thing was a job for servants), so they weren't
veneered over or hidden - and so why hide the marking line.

In the 20th century there was a development of interest in traditional
hand-work. I'd date this from Gimson & the Barnsleys for dovetails, as
Morris and Stickleback went right back to tenons and generally didn;t
use them. Joinery could now appear on the face of a high-quality
piece and I think Gimson was probably the first to do so. We now have
the question of whether a deliberately visible dovetail should have
the marking line or not ? IMHO, it's an affectation. If my dovetails
are any good, then judge them on how they're cut, not whether I drew
an arrow pointing to them.

--
Smert' spamionam