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From butt joints to dovetails, every builder should know these essential woodworking joints —and when to use each one.
The following is a small sample from the book The Complete Starter Guide to Making Wooden Boxes, written by Albert Kleine and published by Fox Chapel Publishing.
A book on box-making essentials would be incomplete without an in-depth discussion of joinery. After all, at its core, a box is just four boards of wood joined together with a top and bottom. Getting a good foundation in joinery is absolutely necessary if you want to make boxes, and it will help you immensely as you continue in your woodworking. That’s why before we go into the projects, we’re going to take some time and focus directly on the topic.
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So, what is joinery? It’s basically exactly what it sounds like. Joinery is the term woodworkers use to describe the method by which two pieces of wood are joined together. How that is done can be achieved in any number of ways—with adhesives, fasteners, interlocking wood parts, or any combination
of methods.
In this chapter, we’ll go over some of the most common and useful joints used in box-making, progressing in difficulty as we go. Getting familiar with these joints early on is essential for completing the projects presented in this book, so make sure you spend the time and effort necessary to really master them.
Some of the joints you may find exceedingly simple, while others can take quite a bit of time to get the hang of. As with most things in life, the way to get good at them is by practicing. It’s a good idea to spend some time just attempting to make a successful joint before moving on to a full project. And try not to get discouraged if your first few attempts at the more challenging joints are less than perfect. I can’t possibly count the number of sad, gap-and-crack laden dovetail joints I put together before getting comfortable with them.
Different joints have different properties that make them more suitable in some circumstances than others. A miter joint, for instance, is a great option for a small jewelry box, but would be potentially disastrous if used on a drawer. That’s why, in addition to showing you how to actually do the joint, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of each method.
By the end of this chapter, you should have a solid understanding of box-making joints, how to do them, and their relative advantages. The joints are presented here primarily so you can complete the projects in this book, but they can also serve as a reference for any project you may take on later. My hope is you’ll gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to employ these joints in all of your woodworking.
Purchase the full book: The Complete Starter Guide to Making Wooden Boxes features 10 box projects with step-by-step photos and instructions. The book is a beginner-friendly way to learn the basics from tools, materials, and safety equipment to woodworking fundamentals
Butt Joint
A rendering of a simple butt joint. Useful for when you need a quick and easy joint. Butt joints are simply the edges of two boards “butted” up against each other. Dowels, screws, or nails are typically used to strengthen the joint, as any glue here is of little use.
Undoubtedly the simplest joint you can use on a box, butt joints are achieved when the ends of two boards are “butted” up against each other. Even though they are very simple, they serve as a good example to bring up some key considerations in box-making.
The thing about butt joints is that they aren’t really joints in themselves—they need something additional to actually hold everything together. Probably the most common way of securing a butt joint is by driving screws or nails through the face of one board and into the endgrain of the other. Dowels, biscuits, and dominoes are other common options.
Regardless of the method used, it’s important to know why a butt joint can’t be held together with just glue. There’s no need to get into the details, but just remember this: glue on endgrain will not result in a reliable joint. Since a butt joint has endgrain touching long grain, any glue applied here is of little structural use. It might hold the joint together temporarily, but eventually it will fail.
How to Make a Butt Joint
1 Start with two pieces of square stock, and on one, mark the location for the dowel pins. Make sure these are centered in the board they are entering—for example, if your stock is 3/4″ (19mm) thick, make a mark 3/8″ (9.5mm) from the edge of the board. The number of pins depends on the width of your board. Choose a number and evenly space them along the width of the board. After marking with a pencil, make indentations with an awl.
2 Spread a bead of wood glue along the endgrain of another piece of scrap. Butt it up against the other and clamp the boards together. Spend time making sure that everything here is aligned, using your fingers to feel for any proud wood at the joints. Let the joint sit for about 30 minutes so the glue has time to set temporarily.
3 Using a 1/4″ (6mm) drill bit (adjust size accordingly for different stock thicknesses), drill straight into the marks you made. Drill as straight as possible. Putting a combination square on your workpiece as a visual reference can help. Make sure you drill about 2″ (5.1cm) or so into the mating board.
4 Cut some dowel stock a bit longer than the holes you drilled, coat them in wood glue, and pound them into the holes.
5 After about 30 minutes, trim the dowels with a flush cut saw, and clean up the joint surface with a hand plane or some sandpaper affixed to a sanding block.
Rabbet Joint
A rendering of a rabbet joint. A more sophisticated version of the butt joint, a rabbet joint takes advantage of a small notch—or rabbet—cut in the edge of one board to
provide mechanical strength. Like the butt joint, dowels are often used to provide additional strength. This is useful for when you want an uninterrupted drawer front, but don’t have the time to do a half-blind dovetail.
A rabbet joint isn’t all that different from a butt joint, and the same general principles apply. It’s an endgrain-to-long-grain joint, so glue alone isn’t sufficient to keep it together. Still, there are some differences that give it an advantage over the butt joint.
Rabbet joints are made by cutting a notch—or rabbet—in the edge of a board. The mating board is then glued and (typically) pinned in the rabbet. The nice thing about a rabbet joint is it is very easy to keep things aligned when clamping, gluing, and pinning. The geometry of the joint keeps things in place.
Pinned rabbet joints are a good option for drawers when you don’t have the time (or haven’t yet developed the skills) to do half-blind dovetails. The pins provide mechanical strength to resist the forces put on the drawer by being opened and closed repeatedly.
How to Make a Rabbet Joint
1 Start with two pieces of stock, one about 1/8″–1/4″ (3–6mm) thicker than the other. Set a marking gauge to the thickness of the thinner board, and on the thicker board, mark the location for the rabbet along the inside face and edges—this will help prevent tear-out at the router table by severing the wood fibers.
2 With a 1/2″ (13mm) upcut spiral or straight flute cutter bit in your router, set the router table fence so that the cutter aligns with your marking gauge line. If your rabbet is wider than your router bit, first set the bit to remove slightly less material than the width of the bit and cut the rabbet. Then, repeat the process again with the bit set at your gauge line.
3 7 Don’t try and rout the rabbet all in one go. It’s not only dangerous but also risks ruining your entire project. Routers should always be viewed as finishing tools, not for bulk material removal. Take light passes, pushing your stock with a scrap block to avoid blowout at the exit of the cut. Raise the router bit by about 1/16″–1/8″ (1.5–3.2mm) before each pass until you reach your final depth.
8 Spread a bead of glue along the inside of the rabbet and clamp the mating board in place. Use clamps in both directions to make sure the joint is fully closed.
5 After the glue has had time to set, repeat the steps from the butt joint section to mark, drill, and trim pins.
Miter Joint
A rendering of a miter joint. Typically used in light-duty applications like small keepsake boxes, miter joints are a good option if you don’t want any visible endgrain in your joint. Since the contact point between boards is mostly endgrain, though, the glue joint isn’t particularly strong. Adding splines is a good idea if you think the extra strength will be needed, although I often skip them.
The main benefit of the miter in box-making is aesthetic—it’s the only joint covered here that shows no visible endgrain. Just like butt and rabbet joints, glue alone here can be risky. The miter joint is mostly endgrain-to-endgrain contact, so don’t expect the glue to hold in tough situations. Since miters are typically used in light-duty applications, however, some woodworkers opt to leave them alone and hope for the best. In situations when you need a little extra reinforcement, however, splines (thin strips of wood inserted into saw kerfs across the miter joint) can be added after the glue has set.
There are any number of ways to cut miters with both hand and power tools, but I’ve found the absolute best way to get a gapless joint is by using a mitered shooting board and hand plane. This removes all the hassle of fussing with angle settings on a table or miter saw. Once the board is built and dialed in, you can cut beautiful miters all day long without even thinking about it.
How to Make a Miter Joint
1 Mark the inside faces of four box sides, making sure your pieces are square. Place a box side down on your mitered shooting board with the inside face facing up. Place a hand plane on the 45-degree ramp and begin planing the ends of the box side. Take light passes with the hand plane, making sure you are applying downward pressure against the 45-degree ramp.
2 Continue checking the edge as you plane until you have just created a full 45-degree cut. Repeat on both ends of all four box sides. If you cut too much, don’t panic—the only thing that really matters here is that opposing sides are the exact same length. Check opposing side lengths against each other, and make light plane passes where appropriate until they are equal.
3 Place all 4 box sides with the inside faces down and edges touching. It also helps to set up a straight edge to press the boards against and keep things in alignment. Stretch blue painter’s tape across the joints, pulling tightly before you press down. You want the tape to have a bit of stretch to it as you close the joint.
4 Carefully turn all four sides over and lightly brush a 50/50 mixture of wood glue and water on all the miters. Allow to dry for about 10-30 minutes. This “glue size” will help seal the endgrain and ensure that the ensuing glue joint is much stronger.
5 Spread some wood glue on all the miters and fold the joints together carefully. If the tape is tight enough, you should feel the joints “snap” together as you bend them. Once all four corners are together, apply tape to the final joint and seal things up. On wider boards, you may want to add some strap clamps to tighten things up. Let the glue set and you’re done!
Miter Joint Tips
Miters can be extremely frustrating to get right off the bat. A lot of people struggle with small gaps either on the inside or the outside of the joint. These issues are the result of two things: either your opposing sides are not of equal length, or your joints aren’t exactly 45 degrees.
Continually check your miter with a combination square. Even if your shooting board is set up right, bad planing technique can give you angles that are slightly off. Make sure you are applying pressure against the 45-degree ramp as you plane—this is very important!
One method for securing miters during glue-up is to use a strap clamp.
There are methods to somewhat fix gappy miters—like rolling the shaft of a screwdriver along the point of a miter to close it up—but these rarely give results that are fitting for a fine box. Taking the extra time to make sure everything is dialed in perfectly really is the best way to get a miter that both looks good and stays together.
Through Dovetails
A rendering of a through dovetail. Even stronger than a box joint, a dovetail takes advantage of wedge-shaped joinery to provide a mechanical lock – the glue is just insurance here. Use when strength is absolutely necessary, or when you just want a very attractive looking joint that shows off your woodworking skills.
The through dovetail is a highly versatile and visually appealing joint that just so happens to be incredibly strong. Because of this, it is my favorite joint to use in box-making, and one that is essential to master if you want to get in the business of making fine boxes.
The strength of the dovetail comes from two sources. The first is mechanical. Note how the “tails” of one board fit perfectly into corresponding gaps in the opposing “pin” board. This is the first joint we’ve seen where one piece of wood is locking into another without the assistance of glue or fasteners.
The dovetail joint also has ample long grain-to-long grain wood contact. The sides of the tails and the pins (both long grain) touch each other directly, so any wood glue applied here is going to be incredibly strong. Together with the mechanical nature of the joint, once the glue dries on a dovetail, it simply isn’t going to come apart without some serious destruction.
Of course, they take quite a bit of practice to get right, and many people are so intimidated by them that they never even try. After mastering the joint myself, I can say with absolute certitude that there is no magic trick or shortcut here. The way to get good at dovetails is to approach them with focus and purpose, and to cut a lot of practice joints.
Clear instructions and a lot of tips along the way can really speed things up. In this example, I am using stock that is 45/8“ (11.8cm) wide and 5/8“ (16mm) thick. Any measurements referenced here are based on those dimensions, so if your stock is different, adjust measurements accordingly.
How to Make a Dovetail Joint
1 Gather two pieces of scrap, and set a marking gauge to project a bit more than the thickness of your stock. Scribe a line on the faces and edges of one board (the “tail board”) and only on the face of the other (the “pin board”).
2 Clamp the tail board in your vise with the end
facing up. Draw a pencil line across the ends of the board about 1/4″ (6.4mm) from the edge. Set a pair of dividers to open 13/8″ (3.5cm) and place one point into a pencil mark. Set the other point into the board and make a mark. Rotate and “walk” the dividers along the edge of the board, making light marks with the points as you go.
3 Repeat this process, starting from the pencil mark at the other edge of the board. When you are finished, you should end up with four equally spaced marks. Use your combination square to extend pencil lines across these marks.
4 Set a bevel gauge to your desired dovetail angle. For this example, I chose seven degrees because it’s a nice overall angle that provides adequate strength. Use the bevel gauge to transfer pencil lines to the face of your tail board down to the marking gauge line.
5 With the tail board clamped in your vise, place your saw directly on one of the lines. It is very important to ensure that your cut is square across the board here, so make sure you don’t deviate from the guideline. Cuts that aren’t perfectly square can cause problems later, so take your time.
6 Use the thumb and forefinger from your non-sawing hand as a fence to stabilize the saw on the line. Tilt the saw slightly to match the dovetail angle you drew on the face of the board. Once you feel comfortable that your saw is square across the board and tilted at approximately the correct angle, you are ready to cut.
7 Focus on holding the angle you set in the previous step while gently moving the saw forward and backward to establish a cut. The feel for this takes some time to build up, so practice on some scrap wood. Try not to put any downward pressure as you cut—the weight of the saw and gravity should be just enough to guide everything properly. Continue sawing, checking continually to make sure you aren’t going past your marking gauge lines (especially on the side of the board that isn’t facing you). Once you’ve reached your marking gauge line on both the front and the back of the board, your cut is complete.
8 Using a fret saw or coping saw, remove the waste between tails. Don’t risk cutting into your baseline by getting too close here. The goal now is to remove the bulk of the waste, not all of it. Everything will be cleaned up later with a chisel.
Note: Spacing Dovetails
The distance between divider points in Step 2 is completely arbitrary. I chose that dimension because I knew it would yield three nicely spaced dovetails on the boards used in this example—and it didn’t require any confusing math at all.
First, pick how many dovetails you want in your project, and set your dividers so that they are equal to about the width of what one tail would be. For example, if you chose four dovetails, open your dividers so they are about 1/4 the width of your tail board. Place one point of the divider in a pencil line like Step 2, and walk along the board, except this time do not make any marks.
Count the number of “turns” you do with your dividers as you walk. This will be the number of dovetails on your project. The last “turn” is when the point of the divider goes past the pencil mark on the opposite end of the board. The distance between this pencil line and the point of the dividers is the pin width.
If you find that you aren’t getting the number of tails you want, or the pin width is too small or large for your liking, simply open or close your dividers accordingly and start again. Once you have everything set, do the process laid out in steps 2 and 3, and you’ll have nice and evenly spaced dovetails.
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