Popular Woodworking 2006-12 № 159, страница 40

doused

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A super-slick trick to make a super-strong joint.

The housed dovetail joint is mechanically sound, historically correct for 18th-century casework and a hallmark of fine craftsmanship. It provides an accurate means of locating drawer dividers and runners, and is quite useful when making shelves. If you can mill stock straight and square, control stock thickness, make dados and operate a router, you can make this joint. When assembling case pieces or shelves, you will have little need for glue, screws or nails.

Dados alone have little mechanical strength, but with the addition of a dovetail socket and dovetail tenon, the joint is properly aligned and quite strong. This joint allows cases to be made without face frames.

When the housed dovetail joint is used for shelving, the shelves are prevented from cupping because the shelves are held flat in the straight, shallow dados.

Much of my work replicates 18th-century case pieces such as chests and highboys. For years, I made furniture by laying out the housed dovetail joinery, carefully hand-sawing, then chiseling the dovetail sockets. This slow and inefficient process tested my patience enough that I began my search for a quicker, more accurate method.

I like to make the housed dovetail joint with a dado roughly V&" deep. The dado is used to align and strengthen drawer runners or shelves. By housing the shoulders ofrun-ners or shelves, the joint doesn't invite gaps like a half-blind dovetail joint, as seen in the drawing on the next page.

by Geoffrey Ames

Geoffrey builds 18th-century period furniture and teaches at the Homestead Woodworking School in New Market, N.H.

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