# Sliding Dovetail question



## 12strings (Nov 15, 2011)

Are there any foreseeable problems making a sliding dovetail in which the tail piece is oak plywood and the groove is routed in a piece of solid oak? I would like to make a medium sized table and use plywood for the rails, connecting the plywood rails to solid oak legs using a sliding dovetail. Is this a bad idea?


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## richgreer (Dec 25, 2009)

This does not sound like a good idea.

I advise that you experiment with some scrap material before doing it on the real thing.


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## 12strings (Nov 15, 2011)

What about this sounds iffy to you? The fact that the rails are plywood, or the whole idea of a sliding dovetail attaching rails?


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

If you do this you might want to laminate the ply to 1" or thicker to
give it more stiffness. A 4" wide length of 3/4" ply is not as stiff as
even a soft pine board of the same dimension.

The other issue is that the veneer on oak ply is 1/40" thick and
won't take a finish the same as your solid oak legs. Run a finish
test and ask yourself if it's worth the cost savings of using the 
ply vs. solid after you've seen the lack of match you get with
the finish.


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## longgone (May 5, 2009)

I have often used dovetails to fasten rails to legs and they work great and are very strong…However I have never used plywood and I agree that it is not very rigid when compared to solid wood.
The rails in the photo have 5" long 3/4" dovetails.


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