An exercise in hand-cut joinery - 3 candle holders

I decided to do a series of three candle trays each using a different combination of woods and each with a different hand-cut joint. This was my first attempt at dovetails and I wanted to attempt them by hand before I used a router to go after them in a future project.

The dovetailed one is redheart (chatke kok) and maple. The through-mortise and tenon one is yellow heart and walnut. The lap joint one is redheart and walnut. Each is finished with Danish oil. The only power tool used in the joinery was my drill press for roughing out the mortise which was cleaned up with chisels. I did have some chipping and cracking issues when cutting the dovetails in the redheart – redheart is prone to chipping. I learned a lot from working on these three, particularly this it is easy to be overaggressive with my dozoku saw.

Two of the three were given as gifts this Christmas.

-- A bad craftsmen blames his cheap #$%ing tools