In 1864, Willard E. Sibley patented a dovetailing machine that made a through-dovetail of distinctive appearance. He manufactured the machine for a few years (1864 to at least 1874) but so far as we know it never met with much success: we have never seen a piece of furniture with this style of dovetail.

Dovetail and the cutters that make it, from the drawings for patent 45,351.

Information Sources

• Tenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, September 1865. Report of the judges:

  Willard E. Sibley, Waltham. Dove-Tailing Machine. This Machine makes a strong dove-tail, novel in form; it is a simple and cheap machine, and works with great rapidity. Award Silver Medal.

• Twelfth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, September and October 1874. Reports of the judges:

  Willard E. Sibley, Waltham, Mass. Patent Dovetailing and Tenoning Machine.—This Machine was awarded a Silver Medal at the exhibition in 1869. It is a simple and very effective Machine, giving very strong work, and is easily managed.

• Fifteenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, September and October 1884. Reports of the judges:

  Willard E. Sibley, Waltham, Mass.—Lead and Slate Pencil Sharpener.—This is an ingenious and quite effective device for sharpening pencils, and is designed mainly for schools. It consists of a belt of sand-paper, so geared and belted that while it moves by one revolution of the crank in one direction, about five feet, the pencil is revolved fifteen times in the opposite direction, and so rapidly grinds away the pencil to a point. The pencil is held in a chuck which can be readily adjusted to any sized pencil, and is so placed that the sand-paper belt gives the proper angle to the point; but this angle can be varied at will by a slight upward pressure of the finger against a spring directly beneath the revolving pencil. Bronze Medal.

• A report to the Board of Public Instruction of the city of Albany, NY, dated March 2, 1885, includes a charge of $5 to Willard E. Sibley, for a "pencil sharpener".
• The Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies, Volume 13 has a paper, "Water power—its measurement and value", read May 17, 1893, by George A. Kimball, (and available through Google Books) that reports on damages awarded to Willard Sibley and others as the result of a land and water seizure by the city of Cambridge. The affected land was in Waltham and Weston, and was taken for the purpose of additional water supply. Sibley's properties and dams provided a year-round average power of 78 to 148 HP, varying primarily from different assumptions of night-time usage and seasonal variation in usage. Estimates of the value of this water power ranged from $90,000 (Sibley's estimate) to 0 (from a witness for the city). It was generally agreed that water rights were decreasing in value as steam power decreased in cost. Sibley required a steam-engine power plant in any event because water power was insufficient during the summer months. The value reached by the commission was $10,000 for the water, plus another $24,000 for other damages including land and buildings.