What are the common woodworking joints?
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There are a wide variety of techniques in joining boards together from simple butt joints to through mortis and tenon joinery. Each joinery technique has a set of applications where it works very well at. Learning how to make these joints will greatly increase your woodworking skills and expand the types of projects that you can take on.
Butt joint – Is the most common and simplest of joints. Two pieces of wood are joined butting up to each other. Typically they combine in a 90 degree angle. Glue and a fastener are used to hold the joint together.
Finger joint – The ends of the boards are cut a set of ‘fingers’. They are cut on the ends of the boards that will be joined together such that they will slide into each other. This produces a joint that offers a lot of gluing surface.
This joint technique is typically used in making boxes. It is also used to splice together pieces of lumber to form a longer single stick. Lumber that is finger jointed is designated as paint grade lumber.
Dove tail – Is a very stable joint that consists of trapezoid dove tails that are cut into the end of one board and the other board has a set of pins cut into it. When the boards are fitted together the resulting joint is very hard to break. Because of the dove tails and pins they provide for a lot of gluing surfaces. This joint requires no additional fasteners.
Mortis and Tenon – Is a very strong joint. This type of a joint has been used in wooden ships and post and beam construction. Homes and barns that were built up to the early 1900’s used mortis and tenon joinery to attach the posts and beams.
The mortis is a rectangular hole that is cut out of the receiving piece of wood. The tenon is cut out of the other piece of wood and is thinner and narrower than the board. The tenon fits into the mortis. A well cut mortis and tenon joint should fit together tightly.
To provide an additional amount of strength to the joint some woodworkers ‘peg’ the mortis and tenon joint. Once the mortis and tenon are combined, on the mortis board 90 degrees to the tenon they drill a hole that goes through the tenon that is currently inside of the mortis. Then tap in a dowel rod into the hole. This will lock the tenon in place and prevent it from leaving the mortis.
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Comments
I am triing to make a semi industrial finger joint line out of a slidding table saw with molder (2 in 1) Seems to be strait forward just having truoble picking the right cutter for the job. the idea is to join 1×2 1×3 1×4 and up to 2×6. The joining is on the tip not on the lenght, so as to make short stock, long and maybe even turn it into laminated glue beams.
Does the figer joint tool have a special name so as to avoid buying the wrong tool.
Well the question is on the name of the finger joint tool used on the tips of the wood to make it longer not wider, Its my understanding the the tools are not the same and do not want to purchase the wrong finger joint tool.