By Darren Anderson
Everything progresses from the basics to the complex. In woodwork DIY, butt joint is the simplest form of woodwork joints. As its name implies, it is simply butting two pieces of wood together to form a joint. To make a butt joint, all you have to do is to cut two pieces of wood to the required length and butt them together. There are various versions of butt joints, developed based on the means of reinforcing the joint. The simplest version of butt joint uses glue to hold the two pieces of wood together at the joint. Gluing does not really reinforce the joint and the resulting joint is still weak, because you are basically gluing the end grain of one piece to the long grain of the other piece. In view of that, woodworkers come up with other methods of reinforcing the joint.
The biscuit reinforced butt joint basically uses an oval shaped wood known as biscuit in the butt joint. The biscuit normally uses beech wood and is specially dried and compressed. It is flexible in characteristics and will swell up when used in a butt joint. To have a biscuit reinforced butt joint, you first need to make a mortise in each of the two pieces of wood you are joining. To make a mortise, you need the right tool such as biscuit joiner or slot cutter bit in a router. The mortises in both pieces of wood should be matching. Once the mortise is ready, the biscuit is insert to one of the mortises with some glue. The other mortise on the other piece of wood is then brought to the one with the biscuit, aligned and clamped. The biscuit in the mortise will absorb some moisture from the glue and swell up in the mortise. When this happens, it will result in a highly fitting joint. The biscuit comes in different sizes for different purposes. Often, more than one biscuit is used side by side, especially when the joining woods are thick. The biscuit reinforced butt joint is commonly used in frames, cabinet carcase construction, and panel assembly alignment.
The dowel joint or dowel reinforced butt joint uses dowels, which are solid cylindrical rods made of wood, to reinforce a butt joint. You can also buy plastic and metal dowels. The dowels come in different diameters, such as inch. inch, and so on, depending on your applications. To make a dowel joint, you need to drill holes in both pieces of wood. The holes in one piece must lined u with the corresponding hole in the other piece. This alignment is important in making good joint. The holes are normally drilled with the help of a dowelling jig, which ensures accurate alignment of the holes. Once the holes are drilled, you then insert the dowels into the hole of one piece and fit the hole of the other piece into the dowel. Glue may or may not be used depending on your application. The dowel joint is much stronger than a non-reinforced butt joint. Common applications of dowel joint are found in frames, carcase construction, chairs, cabinets and panels. Over time, you will find that the furniture with dowel joints may start to creak and wobble as the dowels shrink and become loose. As a result, dowel joints are normally not used in high quality furniture.
The mitered butt joint is a modified version of butt joint. It is basically gluing two pieces of wood at an angle, such that end grain is glued to end grain. The strength of the mitered joint is no stronger than the basic butt joint, but it does look nicer and cleaner than the butt joint. To make a mitered joint, the angles of the two pieces of wood must be cut precisely. This is done using a compound miter saw. Once the woods are cut and ready, you simply glue the ends together. To make the mitered joint strong, you can hold the joint using nails or screws.
Screwed butt joint basically uses screws to hold the butt joint together. The screw should goes from the long grain to the end grain. The trick to good screwed butt joint is to make sure the screw is long enough so that a good portion of the screw is in the piece with the end grain. The rule of thumb is the screw should be three times the thickness of the wood. Often, the piece with the long grain is pre-drilled so that the screw head will be hidden in the wood. Once the screw is in, the hole may or may not be covered with the right size dowel or plastic plug.
There are other variations of butt joint which will be covered in future article.
About the Author: Darren Anderson is the chief editor of his own woodworking site at
woodworkplansandprojects.com
. He is a woodworking hobbyist and a freelance writer
Source:
isnare.com
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