Like most beginners I was daunted by the amount of clamping required to join 2 boards at 90 degrees to each other. Some to hold it in place, others to apply force to the joint and all needing to be set in conjunction with each other
I came up with an adapted version of the 'Blokkz' system (available from Rockler or could be home made from timber) that eliminates much of the heartache and swearing. I'm sure this is not new to many of the more experienced among us but in the hope of saving some of the sweat and tears that us less knowledgeable types would suffer I offer some photos of the boards clamped together.
I screwed the Blokkz onto strips of timber and screwed a crosspiece to the timber to set the distance that the Blokkz would be from the end of the board. This is critical to ensure the force is applied at 90 degrees to the joint surfaces (see photo 1)
I then clamped these to to the end of each board. I found the clamping force at the join would try to lift the cross piece off the board otherwise (see photo 2)
I also used biscuits but apart from helping to position the boards and strengthen the joint I don't think they are that relevant to this methodology
There are some conditions
  • it would only work with boards that are accurately cut (although not necessarily at 45 degrees as long as the force is applied at 90 degrees to the joint surfaces)
  • the boards need to be reasonably thick to allow the surface area to be great enough to stabilise the joint during clamping (these were about 30mm thick boards)

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For the curious the timber is Huon Pine and the end result will be a small coffee table. in photo 2 it is laying on its side, the slots on the inside of the 'L' shape (photo 3) are to take 2 sheets of 10mm tempered glass that will provide the legs of the table hopefully giving it the appearance of floating in space