Essay on Woodworking and Joints

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Butt joints Butt joints are very easy to make. Wood is butted face to edge or end to edge and nailed, screwed or dowelled together. End to edge joints can be joined with grooved clasps.
Strength can be added by gluing the joining faces. These joints are not recommended for hardwood unless pilot holes and screws or dowels are used to hold them together.

Halved joints
Halved joints or lap joints are mostly used to assemble light frames which are going to be covered with hardboard or plywood. Half the thickness of each piece of wood to be joined is cut away with a Tenon saw and the joint is glued and screwed or nailed. Halved lap joints are also used to join long lengths of timber.

Mitre joints
Mitre joints are always cut to 45° in a mitre box so that they will form a 90° corner when joined. As no end wood is ever seen these are very neat joints but they are weak. Normally used for picture frames where they are nailed with panel pins. When used for other purposes they must be strengthened with glue blocks, angle braces or loose tongues. Mitre joints should always be glued.
When nailing a mitre joint always start the nail with one part of the mitre above the other. The nails will pull the mitre into square.

Rebate joints
Rebate joints are used for joining top and bottom ends of furniture. Stopped rebate joints hide the joint. Glue and skew nail, or screw the joint together.

Housed joints
Housed joints are mostly used for shelves. The stopped house joint hides the actual joining. Use skew nails or screws to fasten the boards together.

Dovetail joints

Dovetail joints are very strong and neat joints used primarily to make drawers and boxes. It needs a lot of practice to make a good dovetail joint.

Marking for dovetail joints.
Square the ends of the wood to be dovetailed.

Set the sliding bevel to a suitable pitch of between 1 in 6 for heavy work and 1 in 8 for smaller and more detailed work. Avoid sharp angles as the points of tails break easily.

Scribe the tails on the end and face of the wood and mark the “waste” pieces.

Clamp the wood in a vice and cut on the waste side with a tenon saw.

Lay the two pieces over each other and transfer the markings through the cuts with a tenon saw.

Remove the waste between tails and pins with a chisel.

Lapped dovetails are mostly used for drawer fronts as they give a very neat, strong joint with only one side showing end wood. Marking is the same as for open dovetails but the cutting out between the pins needs a fair amount of chiseling. Special dovetailing bits are available for routers, which are ideal for this job.

Running dovetails

A very nice joint to use for fixing drawer sides to fronts but don't attempt it without a router.

Strengthening joints back to top

Dowels are mostly used to strengthen butt, mitre and rebated joints but are also used to join wood when making or repairing small tables, chairs and doors. When joining wood to be rebated or grooved, drill the holes for dowels first. The diameter of a dowel
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