Dowel jig

[Winegrower]

I'm making a Greene and Greene style sofa end table (for me), and I decided to get it done in my lifetime I would not use mortise and tenon joints but use simple dowel joints. I want to use two dowels in each connection, so for 4 legs there are a bunch of cross connecting pieces. Each leg has two joints at 90 degrees, at three vertical positions, and to avoid dowels interfering from adjacent connections, I offset each face with one of two dowel positions. So I got a couple McMaster Carr drill bushings and made a jig that fits three sizes of joints in two configurations of drill holes. It's type A on one side, turn it over and upside down and it's B position. Armed with a sketch of the table I've marked each connection with A or B side hole positions. If I can keep it straight, it looks like this will work.

 

[Ulma Doctor]

Very nice work, man!

 

[SLK001]

Dowels don't have the strength that you will need. The junk from ikea is made with dowels. What is so hard about a mortise and tendon joint?

 

[Winegrower]

Dowels don't have the strength that you will need. The junk from ikea is made with dowels. What is so hard about a mortise and tendon joint?

Ha ha, I am sure they will. Nothing is particularly hard about mortise and tenon, but it takes a bit more setup time. I have a mortising machine, do these joints frequently. This time, I'm not interested in that path.

 

[francist]

I’m interested to see your finished effort. I like the Greene and Greene stuff — it has a very nice feel about it.

 

[tcooper27]

Dowels don't have the strength that you will need. The junk from ikea is made with dowels. What is so hard about a mortise and tendon joint?

Simply not true. Many side-by-side tests you can find on youtube show dowels are roughly equal to dominos in strength when using a 2:1 ratio of dowels to dominos, and dominos are a staple of quality furniture these days. A good doweling jig can easily pack 15-20 dowels into a single large joint.

 

[MikeInOr]

Dowels don't have the strength that you will need. The junk from ikea is made with dowels. What is so hard about a mortise and tendon joint?

As stated above dowels have plenty of strength and should work fine for the OP's project.

Even the awful flat-pack Ikea furniture will actually hold together quite well if you ignore the instructions and actually glue all the joints and dowels. If you just rely on the funky Ikea lock bolts and bare dowels without any glue on the dowels and joints it gets flimsy with just a little use.

My girlfriend owns a 3 classroom 80 child preschool furnished in Ikea. She noted once that the Ikea furniture I assembled for her 16 years ago is still holding together very well but the furniture she and her staff assembled themselves since then doesn't last nearly as long. I told her my secrete... Titebond III!