That was incredible.

That makes a lot of sense, the dowel could be drilled out for disassembly if ever needed.

My grandfather built furniture using similar methods 100 year ago and they are still going strong today.

Great story. My great great grandfather took his family to America from Liguria (Genoa) in 1869. He wasn't a carpenter to my knowledge. America had recognized the sovereignty of Italy as a country only in 1860. I visited the village in 2018. It's still just a little village with no commercial enterprises at all, not even a market stall. I applied for recognition of Italian citizenship in the USA and received it in 2019. It's quite an emotional feeling to come back full circle to your heritage.

@@deemdoubleu I think if you wanted to make knock-down joinery, you would use a tusked tenon joint. Probably not as strong, but easily disassembled and suitable for tables, sideboards, etc. A tap with a hammer on the tusk tightens up any wobbly joints.

I would bet Tom Figden will be by his side.

Stupid comment. Go see Mr Chickadee for REAL woodworking WITHOUT ANY power.

@@738polarbear oh dear someone is offended because someone else had an opinion.... you really are a fool

Even if you made it with a screws it would be extremely strong. A lap or bridal joint similar to that with just screws would be extremely strong as well. Fools talking about it not being strong enough are deluded about strength. If they put a load large enough to break the table top and then the stiles and rails they are a special type of person.

Pass Me By all the fibres will be supported as the tenon is inside the mortice hole. halfway from the shoulder to the edge

Hi Cri, Paul made a blog on the poor's man dowel maker. I will link that to you, hopefully it helps. paulsellers.com/2013/07/poor-mans-dowel-maker/

The idea with a drawbored mortise and tenon is that the holes are offset by 1/16. With the hole in the tenon being 1/16th nearer to the shoulder of the tenon so that when the pointed wooden pin enters the mortise piece it passes through a tenon and this pulls the shoulders of the tenon tight to the mortise piece. It doesn’t really matter whether the hole is perfectly perpendicular at all.

Gaf It seems the sweet spot for taking glue off is about 20-30 min after set. It's pretty pliable and kind of rubbery and comes off without a lot of contamination to the wood.

Gaf Don't use PVA glue. I use hide glue. Most of the time I use hot hide glue. Liquid hide glue like Old Brown Glue is much easier to use. Hide glues have no effect on finishes. Wipe the excess with a rag damped with cold water and you are done. Hide glue isn't suitable for outdoor pieces though. It is possible to reverse the bond with heat and water.

Gaf A sharp 1" chisel into the corner following both flat faces and cutting through the leather hard glue has worked for me for 50 years. No torn grain and no glue residue. Not gonna change now. i hate wet rags smearing the glue and raising the grain. Forget that. Neither do I like ideas like wrapping with masking tape. its silly.

It pulls the tenon tighter into the mortise.

Pat M Fraid he was wrong. At one time, before the screw-thread, every mortise and tenon relied on the draw-bore method. Surely two hundred thousand woodworkers can't have been wrong.

The glue joint will always be stronger than drawbore joint (at least when you have some long grain against long-grain), simply because it's always wood that would break there, not the glue (at least with modern PVA glues). Drawbore joint is self-tightening, something you don't have with glued joints without trickery. With drawbore joint you don't need to have 6ft long clamps (or 2x 3ft) for dinner table construction etc.

These are great points all, and with smaller m/t joints I think it is possible to weaken and break them more easily but in a large tenon which is 1" thick by 3" long probably not as likely. The gluing of long grain to long grain is what is happening in all my joints so I think the bench will be fine for a loong time to come.

MichaelKingsfordGray For it to split there would need to be room for expansion yes? For that split to be large enough to weaken the joint, it would need to be more than just a little room from, say, a taper on the tenon. If your tenon is fit properly then there would be no room for it to separate. There are still buildings standing (that used this method) without a single screw or glue located in the joints. The real strength of this joint is the dowel seating the shoulder on tightly.

+MichaelKingsfordGray I think you are right and paper is not a fair comparison because the fibers run in all directions, whereas wood runs all fibres parallel. However, when the tenon will crack, it will most likely crack on one side first. This will split the the tenon apart and thus wedge the tenon inside the mortise while relieving most of the pressure on the dowel at the same time. So with more force on the mortise/tenon holding it in place, and relieved stress on the dowel/tenon I don't think the forces will be high enough to actually make the second split then stripping out a full 10mm slot.

PiperCub49 because that does not result in the additional tension force of the draw bore. Drilling right through would give you a through-bore with zero clamping force.

PiperCub49 You wouldn't get the offset that allows dowel to pull the joint tight.

PiperCub49 It wouldn't draw the shoulders up and neither does the peg bend and create the tension you want. If you go to paulsellers.com you can see more on my blog on this issue there.

Paul Sellers Thanks everyone. That makes sense. Paul--I'll get to reading!