Dovetail joints by hand

Dovetail, the coolest joint in Western woodworking. Actually, Chinese/Japanese woodworking has even fancier joints, but I'll ignore them for the time being. After 40 odd years of home hobbyshopping, I got around to doing some. After passing up a router jig at a yard sale for $50, I decided to try the all manual technique. I laid the four pieces out on the bench and turned them over and over again, looking to put the nicest side out where it shows, and then penciled 1,2,3,and 4 on each joint, so as to get things to fit right. I laid a "How2DoIt" book out on the workbench open to a fine color picture of a joint, just to avoid getting the tails confused with the pins. Laid out all four tails with a sharp pencil, a square and a carpenter's bevel. I made the tails roughly square for best strength. Laid out one tail in the center of the board and worked sideways from center to edge to get a symmetrical layout. Be sure to mark the waste from the tails, otherwise you can make a terrible mistake.
Cut in from the end of the board with a small back saw. Was able to stay on the pencil marks without great difficulty. Then used a coping saw to cut out the bottoms. Cut all four tails and then went back and shaved them out with my sharpest chisel. In fact, sharpened the chisel before starting and a couple of times before the job was done. Was able to shave across the grain of the poplar wood without using a hammer on the chisel.
Then I used the cut and trimmed tails to mark the pins on each matching piece. Since this is hand work, each piece comes out slightly different. I made a point of using the proper tail to mark each pin. A handscrew held the two boards together at right angles, so I could pencil the pins without anything slipping. Keep pencil needle sharp. I have a yard sale electric pencil sharpener in the shop for just this purpose.
Hallelujah, just rough cut, the joints were close to fitting together. I shaved down the bottoms of the tails and pins until the top of the joint went together flush. Only after getting the depth right did I trim the sides of the pins and tails. After maybe 10 minutes of shave, try fit, shave again each joint goes together with just a tap from a mallet.
Still got a number of things to do, but the tricky joints all fit and look quite good. A most satisfying afternoon in the shop. And accomplished all this goodness with just ordinary hand tools, no pricey gee whiz power tools.