Woodworking Basics

Use these three powerful techniques to bring your wood projects together.
Story and Photos by Steve Maxwell
June/July 2007
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Image GalleryDowel joints are rock-solid and easy to make using special dowelin
g jigs.
STEVE MAXWELL
Article Tools
Image GalleryPrintE-mailCommentsRSS If you ve got a vision for building your own
furniture, storage shelves, cabinets, tables and various built-ins, there s good n
ews: Success has never been easier. Three revolutionary options now make it much
simpler to create the kind of strong, attractive, long lasting joints necessary
for woodworking success. You don t need to spend a lot of time or money tooling u
p, either. You can become proficient in one afternoon with the wood joinery opti
ons you ll learn about here.
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You need to begin by understanding something fundamental about wood. You can t sim
ply shove the glue-covered edges of two boards together and expect the union to
hold. Take a bookshelf, for instance. If you join the shelves to the uprights wi
th glue alone, the joints will break under minimal stress. Glue is great, but it
does have limitations. This is why most successful woodworking joints involve b
oth glue and some form of interlocking connection. Understanding wood joinery is
really about understanding your options for creating these all-important mechan
ical connections. New to woodworking? Take a look at Woodworking Words, below, for
a glossary of basic technical terms you ll find here.

DOWEL JOINTS
Dowels have been used to join wood for centuries, but that doesn t mean they haven t
kept up with the times. You ll find dowels in everything from antique furniture t
o barn frames, but modern refinements make dowel joints stronger, more accurate,
and quicker and easier to create.
To make a dowel joint, drill holes in mating surfaces of wood. Half the length o
f the dowel goes into each hole, spanning the joint line between the two parts.
(See first photo in Image Gallery.) It s an easy concept to understand, but there s
a technical challenge: Pairs of holes drilled across a joint must be perfectly a
ligned with each other. Without a high level of precision, dowel joints simply w
on t come together.
You can produce accurate dowel joint holes using nothing more than an ordinary d
rill and bit and a homemade drilling guide made from a block of hardwood. This i
s the traditional method cabinetmakers have used for centuries to guide dowel dr
illing, but there are easier ways to do it today. The simplest is a tiny device
called a dowel center. (See second photo in Image Gallery.) These small metal cyli
nders have one flat end. The other end has a rim and a raised point at its cente
r. Drill holes in one side of a joint, then insert dowel centers into all these
holes before temporarily bringing the two parts of the joint together. The point
s on the ends of the dowel centers will mark the locations of the corresponding
holes you need to drill in the mating part. As long as you drill each hole squar
e to the face of the wood, you ll get a reasonable fit.

Doweling jigs are an even more accurate way to regulate the location and angle o
f matching dowel holes. Numerous tool companies make doweling jigs; good ones ca
n cost more than $100. Most include a built-in clamp that holds the jig steady o
n the wood during drilling.
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Although you can buy 3-foot lengths of wooden dowel rod and cut 1-inch- or 2-inc
h-long pieces for use in building furniture and built-ins, there s a better way. R
eady-made fluted dowels cost very little money, they are already cut to length for
joinery work, they have a more accurate diameter than dowel rod and have groove
s pressed onto the outside surface to boost joint strength. These fluted grooves
, produced as the dowels are compressed during manufacture, ensure that these do
wels are truly round in cross section. Fluted dowels typically come in sizes ran
ging from one-quarter inch to one-half inch in diameter. You can use them to ass
emble everything from small projects to high-stress joints such as those between
a table leg and apron.

BISCUIT JOINTS
If you want to tackle a wide range of woodworking joints with just one tool whil
e dealing with the shortest possible learning curve, then biscuit joinery is ide
al. This technology is mature and relatively inexpensive. Using a biscuit joiner
(also called a plate joiner) is not only simple but safe, too: Cut matching slo
ts in the mating pieces of wood using the hand-held power tool. Swab glue on a f
actory-made flat oval of hardwood (this is the biscuit ), push the biscuit into one
slot, then fit the other slotted wood part over the protruding half of the bisc
uit before clamping the whole thing together. Biscuits turn what would ordinaril
y be a weak butt joint into a very strong connection. They re also one of the most
versatile of all the joinery options, ideal for connecting everything from book
shelf parts and cabinet components to small and medium-sized door frames and eve
n window or door trim before it goes up.
Biscuits come in three standard sizes: #0 are five-eighth inch by 1¾ inch; #10 are
three-quarter inch by 2? inch; and #20 are 1 inch by 2? inch. A box of 1,000 bi
scuits costs less than $30, and each slot takes about two seconds to cut once yo
u ve got your biscuit joiner set up. You can buy a basic biscuit joiner for around
$100, and pro-grade models cost less than $300. Machines have crept down in pri
ce substantially from the $800 level seen in the early 1980s. When patent protec
tion ran out on the original Swiss design, held since 1955, the concept entered
the public domain. Tool manufacturers around the world began making their own jo
iners, driving prices way down.

If you re like I was before I tried biscuits, you may not believe these little ova
ls of wood could possibly be strong enough to do anything worthwhile but they ar
e, for two reasons. First, biscuits are compressed at the factory, and as they s
oak up water-based glue they swell and tighten within their grooves. Second, bis
cuits have a diagonal grain orientation, meaning they re strong along both length
and width.
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Standard biscuit joiners use a fully enclosed, 4-inch diameter carbide-tipped bl
ade that extends from inside a spring-loaded safety shroud as the tool is pushed
into a piece of wood. It s possible to hurt yourself with the tool, but you d have
to try pretty hard. Inherent safety is one reason biscuit joiners are ideal for
beginners.
Before you attempt biscuit joints on any project, adjust the depth of the slot t
o be cut by your joiner. If the slots are too shallow, the biscuit won t have enou
gh room, preventing the joint from coming together fully. If the slots are too d
eep, joint strength will suffer because the biscuit will slip too far into one s
ide of the joint during assembly. Ideally, each slot should be about one-thirty-
second inch deeper than half the width of the biscuit. Check this by cutting a s
lot in a piece of scrap wood. Slip a biscuit all the way in and draw a line alon
g its length where it meets the wood surface. Turn the biscuit end for end and r
epeat. The two lines should overlap each other, each located slightly past the c
enter line of the biscuit. All biscuit joiners include controls to adjust slot d
epth. Once you ve tweaked the depth properly, you won t need to do it again.
To establish guides for your joiner, bring project parts together temporarily an
d mark pencil lines on both parts at the joint where you want each biscuit to be
. A 12-inch wide bookshelf, for instance, is plenty strong with three #20 biscui
ts reinforcing each shelf-to-upright joint. Separate the parts and lay them down
on a flat, clean surface. Align the center mark on the face of your biscuit joi
ner with the pencil mark on the wood part, then plunge the slot. Repeat for the
corresponding lines on the mating part. Save yourself grief by assembling all bi
scuit joints without glue for a final check. If there s
a problem that prevents the joint from coming together fully, you ll want to know
about it before you have glue everywhere.
Although you can use biscuit joints almost anywhere, they make the most sense in
three key applications. They offer an excellent way to join horizontal shelves
and uprights in bookcases, cabinets and wardrobes. You ll find them useful for joi
ning the stiles and rails of traditional frame-and-panel doors. Biscuits are als
o ideal for reinforcing intricate joints that are initially assembled with glue.
I especially like to use them in this way on the back faces of mirror and pictu
re frames. Plunge a slot or two across the assembled joint, insert biscuits with
glue, then sand off the protruding biscuit after the glue has dried.

Imagine a wood screw driven at a shallow angle across the back face of a butt jo
int, connecting the two pieces of wood. This is what pocket screws are all about
. You predrill holes for the screws in one part using a special jig, bring the p
arts together, then drive the pocket screws home. The joint is instant, surprisi
ngly strong (though not quite as strong as a biscuit joint) and requires no clam
ps. The screws themselves draw the parts together tight.
Kreg Tool Company made pocket screws popular, and no one disputes that they make
the best jigs for drilling pocket holes. You can get their simplest jig for abo
ut $50. For three times that, you get a model that can handle anything you ll enco
unter building furniture. There are even professional pocket hole jigs for trim
carpenters.
So exactly where do pocket joints make sense? If you re building a floor cabinet,
a bookcase, a set of kitchen cabinets or a run of frame-and-panel wainscoting, y
our design will probably include face frames to define rectangular openings. Ass
embling them is the perfect application for pocket screws. Dowels and biscuits w
ork fine, too, but they both take considerably more set-up, clamping and assembl
y time. There s also the challenge of aligning the mating halves of biscuit holes
or dowel slots that span both parts of a joint if you blow this detail, your par
ts won t line up. There s no such hazard with pocket screws. They re first-rate for bu
ilding wainscoting, fireplace mantels and other architectural details where one
face of the wood is permanently hidden.
Since pocket holes are drilled on one side of the joint only, evening up mating
pieces of wood before assembly isn t restricted in any way. Just bring the parts t
ogether, align them perfectly with your fingertips, clamp them down to your work
bench together to immobilize them, and drive the screws home. Release the clamp;
that s it instant joint assembly, without waiting for glue to dry. In fact, you d
on t need glue at all, though you can go ahead and put it on if it makes you feel
better.
Is there a catch? Yes. The angled holes, an unavoidable part of pocket-screw joi
nery, are pretty ugly. You can buy angled dowels made especially to plug these h
oles, but the results still don t look as clean and classic as biscuit or dowel jo
ints, which leave no trace. This is why I restrict my use of pocket-hole joints
to areas that won t be seen after assembly.
I love traditional woodworking techniques and their long history. But innovation
s deserve praise, too. Using dowels, biscuits and pocket screws, you can produce
excellent, durable and beautiful woodwork in a fraction of the time and cost th
at the old favorite techniques require. With a little wood and a few ideas, you re
ready to make good things happen on your homestead.

Woodworking Words
Biscuit: a factory-made flat oval of compressed hardwood
Butt joint: two or more parts that come together with no overlap or interlocking
connection
Dowel: a length of cylindrical wood
Face frame: a frame, made of horizontal and vertical parts, that is attached to
the front of a cabinet to provide the mounting points for doors
Miter joint: a connection made with equal angles cut on matching parts
Rail: a horizontal length of wood that defines the top or bottom edge of a cabin
et door or opening
Stile: a vertical length of wood that defines a side of a cabinet door or openin
g