You can buy Wood Joints By Machine & By Hand from Gifts to Me for only £13.50 (+P&P)! Usual RRP £16.99
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Offer ends 30th May 2025
End-grain butt joints are useful in building boxes or frames for cabinets and doors. A butt joint is created by fastening the end grain of one piece to the face or edge grain of the adjacent piece
A butt joint is the easiest joint to make however, it has the reputation of being one of the weakest joints. Traditionally, wood glue didn’t hold its strength when applied to end grain. The glue would wick into the grain leaving little on the surface. Many woodworkers reinforce the joint with nails, screws, or other fasteners.
By hand
Tools needed
- Saw
- Hand plane
- Shooting board
With the reputation for weak butt joints when using glue, it’s easy to underestimate the strength of modern wood glues. Properly applied, wood glue forms a very strong joint for most applications. If the joint is going to encounter a lot of stress, it’s best to also reinforce the joint with additional hardware.
square for glue-up
WORKSHOP NOTES
SHOOTING BOARD AND SHOOTING PLANE
A shooting board (sometimes called a “chute” board) excels at squaring up the ends and edges of a workpiece. The fence holds the workpiece square to a track designed to guide a hand plane. A specialty miter plane, shown here, features a sole with the bed and side at 90° and a skewed blade to make a slicing cut across end grain. Shooting boards also work great to square up the long edges of a workpiece.
You can make a simple shooting board using a bench hook and turning your hand plane on its side to ride across the benchtop with the sole against the edge of the bench hook. The key to any shooting board is a fence that’s square to the edge the plane follows to make the cut.
By machine
Tools needed
- Tablesaw or miter saw
Making butt joints or end joints by machine only requires a tablesaw or miter saw. The quality of the blade determines the final quality of the joint.
