How to Make a Simple Dovetail Bedside Table

Freshen up your look with this stylish Scandi inspired bedside table project. With its sleek lines and dovetail box style tabletop, it's the perfect first step into making simple furniture. Using a dovetail jig will help build your confidence before challenging your skills and hand cutting your own furniture joints.   

Our bedside table project features a classic through dovetail joint, which is a popular choice for furniture due to its decorative finish and strength. We used the UJK Universal Dovetail Jig to save time. A versatile jig that achieves excellent, accurate results with a router, it makes crafting your furniture easy. 

Make your dovetail bedside table

To make your dovetail bedside table, watch our Woodworking Wisdom demo or follow our step by step guide below.

Prep your timber

For this project, we opted for a simple pine board as it's easy to source and work with. The main starting point of this project is to decide the size of your table to suit your space. From there, you need to do a drawing and work out the angle the legs need to be.

Prepare and machine your chosen timber to the required sizes. If you chose to use pine, try to avoid dead knots as these may be loose and fall out.  If using pre machined board, check this is flat across the board. Ideally bring this into the workshop for a week to acclimatise, clamp it together for a few weeks to allow this to settle down and to prevent any warping.

Cut the material to length for the main box. The board is cut so that the grain continues around the three showing faces of the box. To do this we used a UJK multifunction workbench and guide rail saw, cutting across two boards at the same time. This allows repeat stops to be set up for the lengths making the cutting quick and accurate.

Mark the cut section to ensure the correct layout.

Create your dovetails

There are different ways to create a dovetail joint. You can hand cut them in the traditional way, or use a dovetail jig to make things quicker and save time.

Set up the dovetail jig to do a through dovetail. The tails are cut first. Because the boards are two wide to go into the jig when glued together, both sides of the jig will need to be set ensuring that the joining point is central within the jig. This is checked using a tip of a V cutter.

With this set, the tops and bottoms can be cut. Next, reset the jig to cut the pins onto the sides of the carcass.

With this done these can be dry fitted together.

The boards can carefully be glued together to make the required width. Ensure the dovetail joints are inline across the width, then, clamp and leave to dry.

Make an angled tenon jig

To cut the angled tenon on the top of the legs, two sections of plywood are screwed together to create a right-angled section. A short length is also screwed onto the top, open side, to create a 'U' shape. The top of the 'L' shape length is cut to the required angle using a miter saw.

Four small blocks of MDF are glued inside the 'L' shape section, two about 65mm from the top and two 400mm down from the top. The top of the legs are also trimmed to the same angle, leaving the legs over length at this stage.

A false base is made to fit onto the router. This can be plywood, MDF or acrylic sheet and is fixed onto the base of the router. This bridges across the width of the box section of the jig. A hole in the centre is cut to allow the milling cutter to pass through.

A 25mm barrel cutter is used, with a pillar drill, to cut a round disc out of some 12mm plywood. A 4mm hole is then drilled through this and countersunk. This is then screwed onto the top of the legs with the screw lining up with the centre point of the angled section.

The legs are positioned into the box, lining up the angled cut of the top of the box and the top of the leg. The top of the plywood disc is set level with the top of the box and the legs are clamped in place.

The router is fitted with a milling cutter with a top bearing, which will be guided by the plywood disc. Mark the cutter depth onto the leg, no more than 14mm-15mm deep. Using the router, work around the top of the leg, taking a 5mm deep cut.

Work around the outside first as this will reduce the risk of the fibres breaking out. Then, run the bearing round the edge of the plywood disc. Lower the cutter depth to get the required 14mm-15mm length. Repeat this process for the four legs.

Cut the legs to length

With the tenon cut, the legs can be cut to length. This needs to be the same angle as the top of the leg.

Using a pencil, mark out the taper and decide which corner will create the bottom of the leg, (the front and back will be different).

Set up the taper jig and position the fence on the bandsaw. It is important to think about which face is cut first to ensure that the leg sits flat on the machine table.  Cut the tapered shape on the two faces. Then use a hand plane, clean up the sawn surface.

A round over cutter is used within a router table to remove the corners. The fence line is lined up with the top bearing. Try to work with the grain direction to leave a cleaner finish.

Mark out the position of the holes for the legs. These are drilled on the pillar drill using a 25mm Forstner bit. Begin by setting the depth stop and doing a test cut on a scrap piece of material first. Then, when ready, drill the four holes.

Sand and glue the box top

Sand the internal faces of the main carcass box using an orbital sander. This can then be glued together to make the box. Try not to use lots of glue as this will appear on the internal surface. Check the box is square by measuring corner to corner and clean up the internal, sanded faces of glue.

The outer faces of the carcass can be sanded. This is the easier option over using a hand plane, which will also do the task. Work around the box to clean up the outer faces and front and back. The legs are also sanded using a mixture of machine and hand to clean up the shape.

Glue the legs into the carcass. These can be set square to the front or splayed out towards the corners. Leave to dry.  All you need to decide is what finish you want to apply.