The Technique of FURNITURE MAKING

EDGE JOINTS (BUTT JOINTS)

These are used for jointing narrow widths, facings, lippings, glued fillets, blocks, etc., and can be either plain glued or reinforced with tongues, dowels or screws.

Plain glued edge joints

Two methods are available:

(a) straight shot joints coated with glue and immediately rubbed together, with the natural suck of the glue providing sufficient pull to effect a close joint, and known as rubbed joints;

(b) joints planed fractionally hollow by the thickness of a piece of thin blotting-paper and pulled together with cramping/clamping actions. The advantage of the latter method is that the ends of the jointed boards are forced into compression and will not open if there is any subsequent shrinkage. Cold-setting resin glues can be used for these cramped-up joints, giving plenty of time for assembly so that boards warped in the length can be cramped at half pressure, tapped down flush and the cramps then tightened.

Rubbed joints

Assuming that several narrow boards have to be jointed together with hide-type glue, the boards should be arranged on the bench, choosing the best face uppermost, matching the grain and colour and, wherever possible, reversing the heart side so that any subsequent rounding is equalized without losing too much thickness (133:2). The boards are then marked as shown (133:1). The first board is held in the vice and the second board placed on it edge to edge and tested with a straight-edge across the total width. Any tilt either way on the top board must be corrected by replaning the edges; but if the boards have been squared on a jointer with incorrectly set fence, or on a shooting-board which is out of true, then reversing the face of