Why We Started Dovetail Cabin Tools

For years, Jared kept a set of log cabin blueprints he’d drawn before he ever met Cori. They mostly gathered dust. The dream of building a log cabin was always there, but it never seemed to go anywhere.

We moved from Colorado to the Ozarks in 2020 and brought that dream with us. It wasn’t until August 2024 that things started falling into place. Looking back, it’s clear God’s hand was on it the whole time. He provided a mill, and later some logs (which, we’ll admit, sat on the ground a lot longer than they should have). Then some friends came alongside us with a tool that made a big project possible at just the right time.

Why dovetail?

Back in Colorado, we mostly knew western-style round log cabins with saddle notches. They work great in the dry mountain air. Once we got to the Ozarks, though, an old-timer who still hand-hews logs told us something that stuck: in a humid climate, dovetailed flat-log cabins far outlast round ones.

He was right. Dovetailing is a time-tested way of joining logs, and you can still find original homesteads around here standing 100 years or more after they were built. That’s pretty impressive for wood in a climate this soggy.

From our cabin to yours

Once we started building our own cabin, we knew we wanted to share it. We wanted to give people a way to build a cabin by hand, even with little experience. Slowly, that dream has become Dovetail Cabin Tools.

Now we get to watch customers use the Dovetail Jig to build their own homes and projects, and find a real passion for it along the way. From Daniel in Alaska to Todd in Wisconsin to Lukasz in Poland, a community of cabin builders has grown up all over the world. We’re grateful to be part of it.

What’s next

This newsletter will come out once a month with:

• Updates from our shop and our own cabin
• Highlights from builders in the Dovetail Cabin Tools community
• Cabin building tips
• And more

If you’re building something, or dreaming about it the way we did for years, hit reply and tell us about it. We’d love to hear from you.

Stay tuned,
Jared & Cori