This Simple Joint is Stronger Than a Dovetail!

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[lostpony]

You forgot to test the most common joint: 1/8" pressboard tacked with one tiny staple, later repaired with clear tape.

[russelldawkins]

I did some experimenting of my own years ago and found that a simple modification of technique made a massive difference when using white glue on joints where end grain is involved.
I found that simply moistening the surfaces with a damp sponge a minute or so before applying the glue drew the glue just a little further into the wood fibres and when the joint was broken it would draw more of the fibres from both sides of the joint, as opposed to the clean break at the glue/wood interface.
This was 50 years ago and I have always moistened the surfaces since.

[steveyork]

Interesting results with a different testing setup than most. I'd like to see you expand on the theory of glue starved box joints. Compare box joints with varying amounts of clearance to see if a "sloppy" fit is actually stronger than a tight fit.

[LRNDIY]

Fantastic video. It’s clear that you’ve stepped up your filming game and that you also put tons of time into this single video. It pays off. Excellent content and incredibly well presented. Hats off to you!

[barryirby]

I have repaired lots of furniture over the years. Never saw a really old box joint that did not fail. Sort of. They look sloppy and loose and the glue turned into grit. I think the gritty flakes of glue tend to hold the joints together. Dovetails loosened up too but the mechanical advantage worked for them. A friend and I worked our way through college building kitchen cabinets and he continued making them until he retired. Made hundreds (Maybe a thousand) of drawers with butt joints and a couple of 1/4" crown staples. Over the fifty years he was in business he never got a call back for a drawer failure. Also important to consider the application and the loading. Drawers get pulled and pushed in one direction over and over. Some joints may suffer shock loading. Drop a box with glued miters and the shock may break the joint but it the miter were reinforced the shock might be dissipated by the reinforcement before the glue failed. Enough questions to keep Suman busy for years.

[alastair]

Excellent video and a great testing machine. Also, your findings were consistent with what I have confirmed in practice, in my own field which is beekeeping. Back 50'ish years ago when I started, bee boxes could be purchased in dovetail, box joint, or rabbet. I assumed dovetail would be the best but my boss who was an old guy and been a beekeeper all his life only used rabbet. A bee box has a hard life. It is exposed to damp then dry then damp, and is outside in the sun. They get loaded up with honey and in a commercial situation are then banged around on a truck and through the honey extraction process. They are expected to give many years service. Through many years of using all types it had become plain that rabbet joints were the hardest wearing of the three options. Another factor, beehives have to be made from untreated timber. The dovetail and box joint corners will rot much faster than a rabbet joint.

[MMWoodworking]

I am a big box-joint person, and one thing I have found is that using the swelling action of water based glues is a great way to close the joint without starving. If you make them just a hair looser, so that only one mallet tap puts them together, they swell within minutes to the point where you can no longer pull them apart, without all of your glue squeezing out when you clamp them.

[Aaron-njou]

With modern drawer slides you can build any joint you want and it will be fine. I can close and open my kitchen drawers with one finger. There is almost no stress on the drawer box because of the operation of the undermount slide. This includes a tray that I built to hold my stand mixer which weighs 40lbs. Very cool test Scott. Some of the drawers in my kitchen are not even actual boxes. They have metal sides with melamine back and bottom screws into them attached to a wood drawer front. It is impressive engineering.

[deadbungeejumper]

Oh man. So much work! Thank you for the dedication! Definitely one of the best joint test videos in existence

[Woodworking]

Like you implied, there are a number of difference forces acting on a joint over its life. I’m in the same camp that a box joint seems to be the best due to modern glues. That said, this vid was incredibly informative. I would have loved to see pocket holes just to see what the haters would say.

[G_G]

Do I have a woodshop? No. Have I ever built a wooden box? No. Did I watch the whole video? Yup. It's like @ProjectFarm for woodworking. Loved it!

[craigsaunders]

I think you have missed the point. There's a reason you see very old furniture with dovetail joints. Longevity. Most draws are never going to have breaking point loads placed on them. They will however have the stress of constant moisture changes and the resulting cupping effects and differential expansion rates. That's what dovetail joints are about.

[nickbrutanna]

One relevancy to glueup times is ... humidity vs. glue. The two most obvious wood glues to use are Titebond II and Titebond III.

**These glues work completely differently.**

And it's not just that TBIII is "water resistant", hence good for use on outdoor furniture.

I live in Florida, typical humidity, even in winter, is probably not less than 50%, and runs up to 70%. Higher at other times of the year... Titebond II takes FOREEEEVER to cure in FL (probably true anywhere along the gulf region). Why? Because Titebond II cures by GIVING OFF MOISTURE. So clearly, if it's in high-humidity locations, it is generally not going to cure fast. I tried to do a joint with TBII and literally 48 hours later I pulled it apart by hand and a lot of the glue was still "thick fluid", not curing at all.

In THESE locations, you're better off with Titebond III. Because TBIII uses a different chemistry to cure -- it ABSORBS moisture from the air. Right, the exact opposite from TBII. So it's GREAT in humid locations. Note: Downside, it "foams", so you typically have to do some cleanup after to smooth the area around your joint. But it is what it is. It will actually cure, which TBII might not. On the other hand, if you live in Arizona, you almost certainly want to use TBII and not TBIII.

[NghtRder]

it makes me so happy to someone challenging their preconceptions

[stevejohnson]

My son and I made very lightweight (2 lbs all in) "battlebots" for the Midwestern "Critter Crunch" competitions. I used "Reinforced Mitre #2) with aircraft plywood as the splines, and never had a frame get destroyed in all the competitions. Love that technique!

[HonoredMule]

This is actually a very well devised testing setup, and that seems to be especially rare among joint strength tests. My only nitpick is that I wish there had been an equal number of samples for each joint so that half of them could be placed in reversed orientation in the test harness. Doing that would indicate how much the asymmetry of the joint design translates into asymmetry of joint strength and also produce more generalized overall averages.

Nevertheless my hat's off to you for really adding something useful to a discussion that often thrives by instead exploiting hidden subjectivity and manufacturing pointless controversy for engagement or self indulgence.

[joevannucci]

Hey Scott, nice work! In your final test, where the splines slip out of the joint without breaking – it's my belief this is caused by glue starvation. Hot hide glue is the solution that works for me.

I make hardwood art frames. Over 2000 frames (8000 joints) in the last few years. 3/8 x 1.25 mouldings, where each miter only has 0.675" of surface area for the glue. I use two 1/8" thick hardwood splines across each joint, placed 3/16" in from each edge. The miters use Titebond I, which seems fine. But when I used Titebond on the splines, they failed by slipping out, not by breaking, just as you found.

The majority of the frames have been made using 315 gram strength hot hide glue for the splines. While I can break a Titebond frame with my bare hands, these are nearly impossible to break either by pulling, levering, or twisting. When they do fail (when I use tools to break them), the splines are cracked or pulled apart with the grain. Usually there's other damage to the mouldings / miters as well. The difference from my perspective is night and day. Much, much stronger.

Without even knowing if one glue is inherently stronger than the other, I believe hot hide works so well because the warm water in the glue swells the wood components, making the joint immediately tighter. Then the glue dries, and the surfaces can't come apart. It's telling that I need to make the splines about .003" thinner than the slot. With Titebond, I was able to make the splines the same as the slot. If I left slop to avoid pushing out the glue, I'd have an unsightly glue line outlining each spline. With hide, if I make the spline as thick as the slot, I can't push it in fast enough to bottom out before it begins grabbing. The glue doesn't set up quite that fast. That's the wood swelliing. There's no visible glue line because ... there just isn't. Hide glue dries clear, and accepts finishes.

If you ever re-do this test, it'd be great to see an objective measurement of what I see anecdotally day after day.

[MrArbitraryNumber]

"Crossed the border with a trunk full of joints". The scripting on this is incredible

[Bobis]

with end-grain to end-grain the glue travels down inside the joint, instead of just having the surfaces grabbing the glue you have the inside structure of the wood allowing more area for the glue to cure into i would love to see and end-grain to end-grain but join vs end-grain to long-grain vs long-grain to long-grain comparison to verify my thoughts though

[vferdman]

When I make drawers for shop furniture, I don't even glue them. I use butt joints and screw them together. If they fail (and none of them have yet in over 20 years), I replace the plywood panel and go on with life. Goal is cheap, quick and effective. For fine furniture a more visually pleasing joint is used. But even on some of my closet organizer drawers I use the same technique and am happy. Those drawers are rarely seen and they work great, cost little and last forever. The whole joint craziness is largely due to YouTube phenomenon and talented woodworkers on YT displaying their skills. That is great and I have hand cut dovetails just to do it and to enjoy the process, but as a joint it is obsolete in a modern drawer. I still love them and I love the box joints and all other classic joinery and woodworking in general. What I don't like is to be made to think that a certain joint is absolutely the best. It all depends and it all evolves with materials, glues, etc. Thanks for the fun video.