Thread: Mitred joints - opening Pandora's Box

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Rob, those splines always remind me of wood-be dovetails. If I was to go for an external spline, I think I would have straight splines angled towards each other clamping like a dovetail, at each end. At mentioned early, to blend in rather than stand out.

Completed one of the tiny drawers today. Its a beauty!

Regards from Perth

Derek

Wood be dovetails is a good name for them . The ones in the picture look a bit chunky and the mismatched on purpose timber choice doesn't do much for me . I reckon a much narrower hand cut in dovetail and using the same timber would look better. If done in the same wood the end grain would still show them off.

Derek, The comments from Saw Mill Creek have gotten under your skin! As hard as it might be I think you just have to let it go. You don't need to justify to anyone why and how you do your work. The results stand out and show the world that you are a very skilled maker. All the pictures of your work have shown me that you are above my standard. You can't compare "white board" joinery (for kitchen cupboards) to the pieces you do.

As a personal choice I would use mitered corners on a box. I am not a fan of long exposed external dovetailed corners but what I have seen of yours shows your skills.

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Zac, hide glue is reversible if you need to make repairs, and old glue does not need to be removed - just add more glue. It dries clear and does not affect any finishes (unlike yellow glue). Cleans up in water. It does not creep. It is as strong as epoxy (according to Don Williams at the Smithsonian).

Old Brown glue is excellent. I get mine from Chris Vesper. Samml bottles are handy. Pop one in the microwave for 10 seconds, and it flows well. It has an open time of 1 hour, and sets hard in 24 hours.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks Derek. I didn't know hide glue was that strong. Kind regards, Zac.

"You can't just glue mitres together - they will come apart!". "Mitres are weak. They need to be reinforced (with dominos, biscuits, etc, etc)". Or, "eventually the joints will fail owing to movement", and "what it they are dropped?".


We seem to cop a fair bit of flak from our North American counterparts for our glue techniques. One comment I will make is that the physical properties of Aussie hardwoods are quite different to their woods. Our woods tend to have more vascular structures so the cured glue also performs like numerous microscopic dowel joints IF the joint is not sanded!

The mechanical properties of a glue joint are very dependent upon how the wood making up the joint is prepared. Clean cut faces tend to be strongest. The long-term durability of a glue only joint is also determined by the environmental cycles it will experience, the complimentary properties of the chosen glue, and the nature and cycle of loading/s it will be subjected to.

Personally, IF a drawer is to be fitted / installed I would never rely upon a glue only joint as the additional leverage of an open drawer, and the number of cycles of opening and closing can stress the joint considerably. Again, very dependent upon the nature of the use, how much weight may end up in the drawer and how often it will cycle.

Originally Posted by The Spin Doctor

It also depends on what you want to achieve in looks. If you like exposed joints great, go with dovetails or hardwood accent splines. If you don't want exposed joints, you'd make a poplar or pine box that was dovetailed or splined (or, dare I say it a MDF mitred box), so the joints didn't fail, and veneer it with an exotic wood... It's all about the end result you're looking for.

And once you're dead, you not going to be too concerned if your furniture lasts past that point. After all, you're not making furniture for King Charles' coronation which will be expected to last a couple hundred years, at least.

I'll agree with the first part, and add that hidden mitered dovetails might be the best combination of glue surface and exterior appearance.

I'll partially disagree with the second part. I see nothing wrong with deciding to make furniture to last beyond one's limited lifetime, no matter who you are. Of course not all furniture is meant for the ages. One's time and materials available and intended use may not allow that. But if it takes a tree 100 or 200 years to get to a size valuable enough to harvest, then it seems to me a good goal to make pieces from that tree that last at least that long if you can.

Originally Posted by derekcohen

...



I came in for a great deal of stick for this at Sawmill Creek. "You can't just glue mitres together - they will come apart!". "Mitres are weak. They need to be reinforced (with dominos, biscuits, etc, etc)". Or, "eventually the joints will fail owing to movement", and "what it they are dropped?".
...
1. Glue is stronger than wood. None of the joints tested broke at the glue line. =RobCosman.com
...
What Patrick's video demonstrated was that glue is stronger than wood. ...

I am with you on this one Derek, having used similar "folded" mitre joints successfully except that I used epoxy rather than brown glue. The wood will break before the epoxy. Particularly like the continuity of the grain in the wrap around corners.

An engineer mate who is an obsessive chair maker - in the clinical sense - keeps telling me that the engineering of a dining chair is more complex than that of a jumbo jet. He accepts that the wood breaks before the glue but keeps challenging me: "If those glued mitres are so strong, then build a glued mitre chair ...."

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

An engineer mate who is an obsessive chair maker - in the clinical sense - keeps telling me that the engineering of a dining chair is more complex than that of a jumbo jet.

Lol. What kind of engineer says that? 😀

Originally Posted by derekcohen

.............................

The questions I have are:

1. While is the least disruptive visually, and ..

2. Which is actually stronger, if at all?

If there is going to be movement, the seam is expected to open up (eventually). All reinforcers (whatever type) may not prevent this.

.................................

Thoughts?

Regards from Perth

Derek

How about something like this? I wanted something to add to the mitres because I simply don't trust glue alone and found these look good (to me) and add a bit of strength in the process . . . .
Jewellry-cabinet_Emu-Apple-08.jpg

Originally Posted by TTIT

How about something like this?

They look fantastic. Sort of art deco. How did you cut them?

Thanks TTIT

Those splines are very artistic. Very nicely done. In the colours you have, the splines, while contrasting, do not dominate. If I were to add splines, my choice would be to avoid a contrasting colour since they would stand out against the light Tassie Oak.

It is worth a post to compliment the one made by Graeme. Ellis Walentine, who runs the WoodCentral forum, is a highly experienced furniture maker and was editor of American Woodworker for a decade or so, had this to say on his forum in reply to the same question I asked here:

Back in the early '70s, when I was just getting into serious woodworking, I was convinced by the prevailing wisdom of the day that miters need to be reinforced, because they were the equivalent of gluing bunches of soda straws end to end. Then I read somewhere (probably FWW, or from one of my pals at RIT) about rubbing glue into the endgrain of the miters as a sizing coat. Ever since then, I've understood that my reinforcement methods were primarily about providing a mechanical backstop to possible glueline failures, not born of absolute necessity. Even on picture frames, where no stress could be anticipated, I customarily trotted out my miter cradle jig for the tablesaw and ran one or two feathers into the corner joints. Even now, as I assembled my latest music box, I ran tiny splines inside the joints for alignment but also for insurance. I admit to overengineering things, and I'm not regretful about it; but I also understand that, at least with PVA glue (and now liquid hide glue, per your recent casework example), this is a case where the safety factor is still overestimated.
Ellis

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by derekcohen

The feedback on Wood Central is unanimously in favour of what I have done.

I'm curious as to why it really matters whether other people approve or not. Is there an election or something? when I started pushing the cap iron, I ran into one person who agreed with what I said - Warren. Raney told me he had met one other person in his travels as a planemaker, so I was barking up the wrong tree more or less. He wasn't condescending, just suggesting it had no merit.

Too much is taken to heart on forums wanting agreement rather than wanting to improve. The comments warren makes improve the quality of what you're doing, even if you don't like the message. I've been the target of them in the past - it's just the way it goes. If we're all being buddies and nobody steps on toes, we're going to end up pushing plastic handled jigs everywhere using fingerjoint boards.

As far as the joint itself goes - we all need to take a deep breath when we're building stuff. It's one thing to hope for a piece to end up unrestored in the Carnegie 200 years from now. It's another thing when the repairman is on site or is a relative who can be dialed.

Years ago, I asked for information on french polishing. only warren gave me legitimate references (though as you would guess, he didn't care for modern additions that were asserted to be "the way" when they were "a way"). Everyone else told me that the finish wasn't going to be durable, it was a waste of time, and everyone either sprays a conversion varnish or wipes on polyurethane. I would make french polished stuff for the kids when they get older without question. I wouldn't sell a coffee table out of a retail shop done with it. Not many of us are doing something similar to the latter.

if you want to see some of warren's work, he's done some contract work on furniture at anderson and stauffer's website. Sometimes he gets nice work like that to contribute on, and I'm sure some of it is less exciting (his mention once of having to carve something very simple and probably not that interesting in the ends of 60 church pews).

Consensus doesn't mean much, though.

Hi David

I have always admired your perseverance ... although your dedication can become somewhat obsessive I credit you - not Warren - with the re-emergence of the chipbreaker. You worked this out, and Warren was minimal help. Now you need to realise that the members here do not know Warren at all, unless they have travelled to Sawmill Creek or WoodCentral. Warren would not give you ice in winter, and his manner is arrogant, dismissive, and opinionated. He will allude to something, refuse to say more, and then become possessive and competitive when someone comes up with a solution. "I was doing that 30 years ago", he will sneer in a condescending tone.

You say, "I'm curious as to why it really matters whether other people approve or not", yet you frequently speak of Warren in hushed tones. As far as I am concerned, while he may be the most knowledgeable woodworker on the planet, he shares nothing with others, and sits on his eggs and guards his knowledge as if it was so precious. It means nil if it is not shared.

On woodwork forums, like this one, it is the exception to have anything but the best exchanges. But Warren would not last two minutes here. We would not stand for his manner.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Hi David

I have always admired your perseverance ... although your dedication can become somewhat obsessive I credit you - not Warren - with the re-emergence of the chipbreaker. You worked this out, and Warren was minimal help. Now you need to realise that the members here do not know Warren at all, unless they have travelled to Sawmill Creek or WoodCentral. Warren would not give you ice in winter, and his manner is arrogant, dismissive, and opinionated. He will allude to something, refuse to say more, and then become possessive and competitive when someone comes up with a solution. "I was doing that 30 years ago", he will sneer in a condescending tone.

You say, "I'm curious as to why it really matters whether other people approve or not", yet you frequently speak of Warren in hushed tones. As far as I am concerned, while he may be the most knowledgeable woodworker on the planet, he shares nothing with others, and sits on his eggs and guards his knowledge as if it was so precious. It means nil if it is not shared.

On woodwork forums, like this one, it is the exception to have anything but the best exchanges. But Warren would not last two minutes here. We would not stand for his manner.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I brought him up because he was mentioned earlier in this thread. I've met warren three times now. I told him that I had blasted him a couple of times in the past and to the extent that I was off base, I apologize for it, but it wasn't in trying to create consensus for or against him, I was trying to push him to tell us something. It didn't work - there is one route - you either gather up the criticism and use it (often for a better outcome) or you ask him a direct question and the answer will usually be short, and may give you enough to go on and may not.

Why warren doesn't want to elicit discussion that is reciprocal, I don't know. In person is a completely different experience because there is not time to suppose that he has bad motives - however, if you don't ask a specific question, he doesn't just offer anything up. When he was here the first time, I realized after about three hours that I still had no idea what he makes, but that his experience is hands on - legitimate - based on how he navigated getting a feel for my stuff. Maybe he was surprised that I was actually doing it, too - I don't know. so I asked him outright what he typically does and he showed me some pictures of recent work that he had on his phone - it's, not surprising, not work accessible to the average intermediate work, and some was complicated, and others not. It's also clear that in how much faffing he had to do to track it down on his phone, he doesn't catalogue much intending to show it to anyone.

The consensus thing has led us astray a lot of times, though - what we want to know is either interpreting things that have happened before to your piece (or you want to know or should want to know), or what happens after the passage of time and the circumstances.

That's realistic.

More common on forums is "regardless of what happens to these over 30 years, I'm right and you're wrong" or the converse. The information that comes back or the real world examples of something that didn't survive or did are pretty sparse.

This strikes me as being somewhat related to the japanning thing thing that I just went on a tirade about - I'm mad because I'm sure someone knew that the attempt that I made on the first try would work, and what the important parameters are, but it wasn't worth it to work against the consensus, which is out there - that this is either hard or expensive to do. I understand the components and the importance of resin percentage and bake temperature, and if those things are done right, it's easier than even brushing on and waiting for regular varnish to cure - if they're done wrong, then the result is soft or unbaked or whatever, and the consensus becomes that it's difficult when it isn't.

I'm just not going to post on forums much longer because the narrow and deep thing just doesn't work on forums. I had incentive to figure out the cap iron - if I wanted to work a different way, it probably never would've mattered, which means it really isn't going to matter to most people. I wish I could point out to the average person, though, that the Bills and Warrens of the world can peeve you but sooner or later, we're all better off of the quality of the information they provide is giving us better outcomes. Consensus about an idea just doesn't amount to much vs. the actual outcome - and we all tend to own that ourselves for things we do, and laying that level of usefulness after we "personally own" it from experience on others doesn't survive the snowball of consensus that tends to form bigger and faster based on personalities.

when it's just off the mark a little bit, we end up using high angle planes. when it's off the mark a lot, we hear from people that Stumpy Numbs or Rex Kruger have a video that we should see.

Originally Posted by D.W.

The consensus thing has led us astray a lot of times, though - what we want to know is either interpreting things that have happened before to your piece (or you want to know or should want to know), or what happens after the passage of time and the circumstances.

Yep, step back, cool off, and assess the situation for what it really is!

Is adding another layer of insurance, i.e. feathers, splines, dovetails, ..... a huge impost? Belt and braces, perhaps, or is it really overkill?

Time will tell and we will learn through makers brave enough to challenge the consensus, and who share their reasoning, experience, knowledge, and findings.