Hand Work, Efficiency, and Joinery

In my last two posts about working efficiently with hand tools, from March 19th and March 28th, we began to look at unlocking the mystery to working efficiently with hand tools. In the first post, we looked at some historical evidence and records that gave us an idea of just how fast our 17th and 18th century ancestors could work. In the second post, we tied in lumber selection. Today, I want to discuss another “secret” to doing effecient hand work, the joinery.

Traditional joinery, like dovetails, mortise and tenon, etc., are not only the best choice for furniture because of their superior strength, but also because of the ease and speed which they can be made if you are using hand tools. If we look at period pieces, the majority of the joinery (at least the joinery that can be seen in the finished piece) is designed to be made easily with the tools available to the craftsmen at the time. We’ve all probably seen Frank Klausz and Rob Cosman cut through dovetails for a drawer sized piece in about 3 minutes. Half blind or lapped dovetails for a similar sized piece can be done in roughly twice the time it takes to make through dovetails. While they may not be perfect showy dovetails when cut at that speed, they are just as functional as showy dovetails. Plus, period cabinetmakers weren’t concerned about making their joinery showy because the joinery was typically hidden inside a case or behind a molding. For the most part, joinery was all about function.

One joinery clue to working effeciently can be seen inside of many period drawers. As I mentioned, lapped dovetails typically take about twice as long to cut as through dovetails do. However, in a typical period piece, lapped dovetails often times will far outnumber the through dovetails, especially if the piece has a lot of drawers. To increase effeciency when cleaning out the pins in lapped dovetails, the saw cuts on the pin boards were usually extended well beyond the baseline of the joint. This wasn’t sloppy craftsmanship, but rather a way to use the saw to remove more of the waste than could be removed by stopping the saw cut at the baseline. This is most often seen (or not seen) on the inside faces of drawer fronts. However, since the drawers are typically loaded up with items, and since the inside of the drawer front faces away from the person opening the drawers, the overcuts are hidden from view, unless one pokes their head into the drawer.

Another clue to working effeciently by hand can be seen in the joinery (actually the lack of joinery) in wide panels for things like case sides. During the period, wide boards were the name of the game. Very rarely do we see a panel, the side of a case piece like a chest of drawers for example, made up of more than two edge glued boards. In fact, we see one wide board even more frequently than two edge glued boards, except in the case of extremely wide panels like the tops of large dining tables. The reason is simple, speed. If you hand plane your lumber from the rough, you know that it takes just as long to plane the face of a 6″ wide board as it does to plane the face of a 12″ or 16″ wide board. By using hand planes, the stock width we can easily plane isn’t limited by the width of a power jointer bed. So by using the widest boards available, we save time. This is because once you plane the wide board flat, you’re ready for joinery. In contrast, if you glue up a panel from multiple boards, you have to plane each of those boards flat first, joint their edges, glue them up, and then reflatten the panel after the glue dries before you can cut any joinery. This adds significantly to the time it takes to build the piece. For this reason, I always try to use the widest boards I can find for a particular part.

One group of joints that don’t show up very often in period pieces are stopped joints. Often times, the question comes up in the hand tool communities as to how to make a stopped groove or a stopped rabbet for something like a small box or drawer bottom. While these joints can be made with hand tools, they’re not made very efficiently. The short answer is that they require a lot of careful chisel work. However, the longer answer is that while they can be made with hand tools, they typically weren’t. Rather than making a stopped groove or rabbet for a drawer bottom, for example, a through groove and/or through rabbet was used and burried inside of the lapped dovetails at the front. At the back of the drawer, there was no groove or rabbet at all. Instead, the drawer back was narrower than the sides, only coming to the top of the groove or rabbet. The bottom could then be slid under the drawer back, and into the groove and/or rabbet in the sides and front. For small boxes with all sides being of equal width, rather than using a stopped groove or rabbet, through grooves or rabbets can be hidden inside of lapped dovetails at the corners, or if through dovetails are desired, the bottom tail and pin can be modified to hide the groove or rabbet. This is much faster and easier than making stopped grooves or rabbets (and will be the subject of a future post).

Where we do occasionally see stopped joints is in dados within a desk gallery. Often times, the partitions in the desk’s gallery are dadoed into the sides of the case. Because these partitions are much narrower than the case sides, stopped dadoes are required in these cases. However, this is more of an exception rather than the rule. In almost all other instances where dado joints may be used in a period case piece, the joints were cut through in order to make them easy to cut with a plane. If you enjoy using hand tools and you’ve never used a dado plane, you owe it to yourself to try one. There’s no faster or easier way to make a properly sized dado than a proper dado plane.

So if you’re a hand tool junkie like me, here’s my blatant plug for you to study period furniture. Even if you don’t like the style and have no intention of ever building a period piece, studying the construction techniques of these pieces will go a long way toward helping you to become more effecient with your hand tools. Once you understand how traditional joinery was used, you can adapt it to any style of furniture you like. Then, when you see something like a contemporary piece in a magazine or gallery that you really like, you can easily switch out the inferior biscuit, pocket screw, lock miter and cope and stick joinery for stronger, traditional joinery methods, and still be able to build the piece in a reasonable amount of time using your basic hand tools.