Stopped by the old Krenshaw mill in Vermont last month and the dovetails in their 1940s file cabinets stopped me cold

Eric Ramirez · 2026-10-19T06:30:05.115749+00:00

My wife and I were driving through Vermont last month and we pulled off in a little town called Bellows Falls to stretch our legs, and there was this old mill building turned into a co-op of shops. One booth had a row of wooden file cabinets from the 1940s that the guy said came out of the mill office when it shut down. I opened one drawer and the dovetails were so tight you could barely see the line where the pins and tails met, all hand cut, no filler, no gaps. The drawer bottoms were solid pine and still flat as a board after 80 years, and the runners had worn into these smooth dark grooves from all that sliding. I stood there running my thumb over the joints for probably ten minutes while my wife waited by the door. Compared to the plywood boxes I see coming out of shops now, even nice ones, it's a whole different animal. The guy wanted $180 for the pair and I'm still kicking myself for not grabbing them. Does anyone here still cut dovetails by hand on production pieces, or is that just a hobby thing now?

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Stopped by the old Krenshaw mill in Vermont last month and the dovetails in their 1940s file cabinets stopped me cold | Cabinetmakers - HW Forums