An excerpt from Joshua Klein’s forthcoming book, Joined: A Bench Guide to Furniture Joinery: “Now, your tenon is bigger than the mortise, and that’s good – but you don’t want to split the leg when you drive it. Carve shallow flats on the two sides perpendicular to the grain orientation of the leg (i.e. the “sides” of the tenon, not the “top” and “bottom”). This sideways relief ensures that your tenon doesn’t act as a wedge, splitting the leg apart. This was a common historical practice. Brush a little hide glue in the mortise and then dip the end of the tenon in hide glue. Drive it in. Hard. This joint is a serious mechanical lock so it ought...
Joshua’s new book, Joined: A Bench Guide to Furniture Joinery, is packed full of useful insight – the kind that you usually get in a one-on-one conversation with an instructor. It’s those little hints or bits of guidance that can make all the difference in pulling off a woodworking operation: “Turn the chisel over and pare with the bevel up,” or “Stay off the line when ripping – a few passes with the plane will finish the job.” While editing through the rough draft of the manuscript, I came across this gem describing the process of fitting rail tenons into mortises: “This back-and-forth test fitting and marking can get tedious, but it’s important to never work blindly. It’s always worth...
An excerpt from Joshua Klein’s forthcoming book, Joined: A Bench Guide to Furniture Joinery: “Now to join the two boards. Place the square-end board in the vise a touch higher than a support block and place the rabbeted board into place on top, just as you did with the dovetails. Make sure there are no unsightly gaps and make any necessary adjustments now. Get yourself some legit handmade nails from a blacksmith. If you don’t know a local smith, a quick internet search will pull up some options. Many smiths don’t feel like making nails because most customers balk at the somewhat expensive cost per piece, so if you find a kind soul who will set you up with nails, treat...
“When you’re confident everything is perfectly lined up, scribe the angles with your knife. Several gentle and progressively deeper lines are better than one deep line. Do all the right sides first, then come back for the left sides, as you did with the sawing of the tails.
An excerpt from Joshua Klein’s forthcoming book, Joined: A Bench Guide to Furniture Joinery: “Here is one reason I prefer to have my workbench against a wall: avoiding the use of clamps in paring operations. To pare chamfers onto the tenon for ease of assembly, I butt the rail against the wall. This is so much faster than messing with clamps or a vise and allows me to instantly adjust the workpiece. A related technique is pinning the work with my hip into a fixed point on the bench. Depending on the stock’s length, sometimes it’s the metal-toothed bench hook (planing stop) or in this case the wooden side rest. I’m sure some would think this is silly and...
I’ve long had this project on the backburner, waiting for just the right time to do it. My new book, Joined: A Bench Guide to Furniture Joinery, is designed to be an at-the-bench step-by-step guide through the fundamental furniture joints. I’ve not covered this material anywhere else in this kind of depth before, and we hear from our readers that they’d like more hands-on help. The format is photography-rich, and the commentary explains all the details. This book is intended to literally lay on the workbench next to you as you saw, pare, and join these joints. We’ve intentionally given generous margins on each page so that you can make notes and comments as you work through the projects....