Thread: Advice on joinery for chair backs

From a newbies point of view, this looks like a job for mortise & tenon, or floating tenon done via a Domino 700 (depends on the dimensions of the timber - you would aim for 1/3rd of the timber thickness being the tenon, so 21mm timber = 7mm tenon, and thus in the range of the Domino 500 instead).

I may well be wrong, but just looking at it and thinking it through, biscuits and dowels would seem insufficient for this - I'm probably using the wrong terminology, but there wouldn't be enough "meat" in the joint to bond everything well enough?

What tools do you have to make the joints? If you've got a router and some mortise bits it's not too hard to cut the mortise's. You could then use floating tenon's that you can even cut by hand if you have to. Once you get set up it doesn't take long.

Originally Posted by jimfish

I’ve hade terrible trouble getting dowels anywhere near close. I don’t have Brad point drill bits and was wondering if they make much difference in drilling accuracy.

Brad points are pretty much essential, you'll never get a decent hole in timber by hand without one. Even with a drill press you can only do it if everything is tightly clamped down.

2 50x10mm dowels per joint should do, 3 is better if you have space. Better still if you can bump up to 1/2" dowels.

Thanks for the input guys, I’m going to stick with dowels for now. I’ve ordered a jig that will allow me to clamp the pieces together and drill both pieces at the same time. If I still can’t get a good join it will be mortise and tenon.