A Discourse on Joinery

 A Discourse on Joinery

By Bobby Neal Winters

I am making a cedar chest for one of my daughters.  I think I’ve mentioned this before. My plan is to make it 2 feet long, one foot wide, and one foot deep. 

Or thereabouts.

I find that I don’t use my tape measure as much as I thought I would.  I cut the certain boards to the size I need them and those boards provide my standard from that point on.

And I don’t use plans. That is to say, I don’t use a plan that anyone has put on paper. I’ve got an idea of what I want to make; I’ve got a small set of things I know how to do; and I’ve got the time to figure it out.  I am doing it just to please myself after all.

So far what I’ve done is to make a frame.  I’ve made a pair of identical rectangles using dovetails. (And might I say, these might be the finest dovetails I’ve ever done.)  One of these rectangles will sit on the bottom of the chest and the other will be at the top. I’ve cut some boards, let’s call them stretchers, to keep the top and the bottom separated.

This is a frame.

I am going to make the top, bottom, and sides of the chest from panels of cedar boards that have been glued together.  I will glue these to the frame.

Currently my plan is to cut a space in the bottom panel about an eighth of an inch deep for the bottom rectangle to fit in.  This will keep the frame from sliding out of square with the bottom panel.

This is key.  This is the point of doing it this way.  The cutting I am getting good at. The gluing--a skill we learn in kindergarten--is hard.

While glue does hold pieces of wood together, before it starts to dry it can be kind of a lubricant.  I’ve clamped up something to glue overnight and when I came out to inspect it the next morning, I’ve occasionally discovered that some of the pieces have slipped out of square.  

Sometimes rather badly.

The answer is more clamps.

For small projects, while you can never have too many clamps, I am close to having enough. 

Close.  Not there. Close.

For larger projects this isn’t the case.  But large projects require large clamps, and large clamps call for large amounts of cash.

There are other toys on which that cash can be spent.

And I do have another solution.

I build frames. 

The frame is skeletal by nature and because of this it can be clamped with small clamps. You then use small clamps to clamp panels to this as the glue dries. I’ve used frames to make night stands, a shelf for the garage, a number of cabinets of varying sizes for the garage, a shelf for the pantry, and now a smallish cedar chest.

I am getting better at making frames.  My joinery skills are getting better.  I am better at cutting dovetails than I used to be.

And I am getting more patient.

I glue the top of the frame together; then I glue the bottom of the frame together; then I join the top to the bottom.

I could join the sides to the frame with glue and just leave it at that, with no physical joinery between the sides, but what fun would that be.

I’ve got two ideas:  The first is to join the lateral sides with dovetails; the second is to use rabbets and dadoes. (This would be making a tongue on one board and a groove on the other, and then sliding them together.)  I’ve been thinking about this in the small hours of the morning before men who want to stay married get out of bed.

Like I said, I am getting more patient.

I think my next step is to prepare the bottom of the box to be joined to the frame.  Maybe I will start gluing up the panels for the sides as well.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.