Reply by Loren

I try to make the long grain a little proud. Short grain is too tricky
to pare off flush, especially in softer woods, imo.

The way to get nice dovetails every time is pick a way of doing
it that works with your mental process (makes sense to you)
and for which you can tune your tools. Then work on doing
it the same way every time and your muscle memory takes
care of the aspect of dovetailing that seems so fussy when
you are learning.

There are some good comments on hand dovetailing in Krenov’s
books. He used dovetails in a lot of his pieces and the appearance
was always flawless from what I’ve seen.