I think you hit the nail on the head with the “power of leverage” comment, and I think it’s where both of these myths stem from. End to end and miter glue ups aren’t inherently weak; they just happen to be the configurations that result in the most leverage placed on them since wood is typically cut the longest in the direction of the grain. That’s a hard story for master woodworkers to instill into apprentices over generations, though, so it got boiled down to dogma of “these joints are weak”.
The lab test mode is very different to the sample 'frame' broken by hand. In the lab tests, the bending moment is across the weaker plane of the test pieces, i.e. you're bending across the thin section but with the mitre broken by hand, you're bending across the thick section. This means that wood section is inherently stronger in relation to the section of the joint (the wood is thicker, and the joint is thinner) and there is the added disadvantage of a stress raiser at the inner intersection that predetermines where the fracture will initiate -at the glued joint. in addition, the bending mode of a mitre bent that way is such that the fulcrum for the two opposing levers is on the outside of the joint and if you look at the resulting forces at the inside of teh joint, they will be orientated more along the grain axis rather than across the lignum. As an engineer, I very much appreciate your methodical approach and your focus on relative strength (and failure modes) using samples of identical geometry. I can't help feeling that comparing the effects of geometry would teach us more, but I guess that your test equipment wouldn’t be able to apply sufficient load to break the joint if you rotated those samples 90 degrees and you would need to scale the geometry down. Keep up the good work though. I enjoy the videos and the intelligent debate that stems from them.
Very true, but probably irrelevant. Instead of loading a single miter, picture how miter joints are actually loaded in your projects. The shape of the final project is usually a closed loop of some sort, and the forces can't produce a large bending moment like in the sample he broke by hand. In practice, miter joints are subjected to tension and shear - the same forces produced in Patrick's test apparatus.
@@charlesenfield2192I agree that it's unlikely that a mitre would be used in an 'open ended' way like that and that mitres are part of a closed structure. These joints are most stressed by loads that cause the joint to open or close such as loads on opposing corners or opposing loads along opposite sides. These cause tensile stresses at the inner corners of two opposing joints and the outer corners of the other two. My real point is not about mitres but about the effects of the joint geometry with respect to the width vs height of the glued section and the potential effect of stress raising corners at the interface. Patrick is suggesting that there are other aspects to consider in further studies, I'm proposing some.
I thought the same, the direction of forces exerted during his test are significantly different than his hands on demonstration. It would be tantamount to twisting the wood as opposed to prying. I appreciated his scientific approach and believe that there should be follow up research.
Came here to say the same thing. Well, actually I came here to find someone else who said it better than I could and put an appreciative comment and thumbs up on their superior post.
I think an important 'real world' factor is the inherent difficulty in clamping miters, even well cut ones. In many instances we use band clamps which do little more than hold the pieces in position rather than apply a good clamping pressure. Excellent video by the way. Thank you.
I make a ton of frames. I typically use a frame made of threaded rod and corner braces to clamp the frame but I have also used the type of band clamp with the plastic corners. You probably know the type I’m referring to. In my experience both theses types can exert tremendous pressure on a frame. The reason is the multiplication of the force vectors in all 3 directions. As you may be aware a wedge can exert tremendous force. In a typical frame glue up each of the 8 miters are effectively acting as wedges multiplying the force of the clamp it’s self. The tension on the miters is many times greater than a typical straight clamp can exert. There are actually 3 vector forces on each miter. One horizontal, one vertical and one diagonal. A typical clamp base only one.
To the extent that ease of clamping affects the fit of the joint, I agree, but Patrick already addressed that. High clamping forces can be used to close up a poorly-fitted joint, and that's hard with miters. However, the real problem is the poorly fitted joint. Well cut miters require very little clamping force to achieve full strength. Holding them in position is all that's required. This is easy to test if you care to. Cut four small samples from the same board with straight, square edges. Glue them together in pairs. For one pair clamp with a rubber band, and the other squeeze it has hard as you like with the clamp of your choice. Once cured, break them both. I doubt you'll perceive a difference. This leads me to request a different test in the future. I've heard people suggest you can over-clamp, and "squeeze out all the glue", resulting in a weaker joint. I have no experience to suggest there's any truth to this one, nor given what I know about fluid mechanics, can I think of any way to actually squeeze out all the glue.
"For those few who don't love vector calculus..." I for one have found vector calculus to be rather an acquired taste. Your videos, on the other hand, are easy to love.
well of course, it's all about the rate of change of the thingamajig in the oriented direction of the whatsit, when it comes down to it. Simple, really....
As a physicist and woodworker, I love what you're doing with this series, Patrick Sullivan -- thank you for all the work you put into these so we all can learn more from your quantitative analysis.
@@supplanterjim -- I suspect you're right that woodworkers skew STEM, perhaps because the technical barrier is sufficient to filter out many of the "crafts"-builders (
@@supplanterjim it might seem that way because you are looking at anecdotal information and may have a bias based on your environment where you observe woodworkers. A bigger study with rigorous data collection that corrects for baseline and avoids common biases might reveal the full picture.
Well said Patrick. I appreciate your effort and demeanor. Recognizing that woodworkers are mostly intelligent people with a high standard of excellence is what makes the joy and challenges of woodworking so fulfilling. We appreciate what you are trying to do and thank you for your effort and spirit of excellence.
The force direction you use in your test, isn't usually the ones I have a problem with... The forces in a pictureframe or box are also at an right angle to the grain. The example where you break the miter with your hands, are example of this force. Could be interesting to see a test of this... Great video, it's good to shake things up, especially myths. We think we know the truth, but really it's often just cultural handdown 😂
I think this is even more of an issue when simulating a "bad" miter joint. I think the plastic spacer slivers should be perpendicular to the applied forces, like they would be if they were in a mitered joint of a picture frame. Thus, in the test rig, you would use a long 3" sliver along the top of the joint horizontally, rather than the short vertical sliver that was used in the test rig. Alternatively one could rotate the samples in the test rig by 90 degrees and test the breaking strength in the other direction, but then you do not get to compare results to the previous tests of end-grain and side-grain as the testing geometry is fifferent.
That's the problem with this test. It tests the strength of a miter joints in a direction that's irrelevant to the forces that most miter joints actually endure. The hand broken test at the beginning is actually more representative to the forces that people worry about on miters than the ones he carefully measures.
Thank you so much for your time and dedication to the art and craft of woodworking. You explode myths that have been dear to my heart for a long time and you do it with patience and clarity that easily dispels my previous assumptions. Kudos to you, Mr. Sullivan.
These videos are incredible. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I would love to see you bookend this series with a video that focuses more on actual geometry, aka practical application of joinery. It would me more of a “why certain joints are used in certain circumstances” than a scientific apples to apples comparison, but it seems to be one of the least understood aspects of woodworking.
If I recall, it was common wisdom that end grain "starved" the joint of glue. That is, the "straws" of the wood would "suck up" the glue much more readily in an end-grain joint--hence the idea of pre-sealing the end grain with glue, first. Maybe that's really the myth that we're dispelling here, and pre-sealing is clearly not necessary. (But maybe it's something to test, Mr. Sullivan!)
Sadly he does not actually show any longgrain-joints in the same situation cause then it would become apparent why they are used (hint: cause they are as strong as the wood itself). instead he chooses to not compare actual longgrain joints.
@@ABaumstumpf in fact he proved in the first that endgrain joints are much stronger because the bond is more glue than wood fibers or lignin (or whatever the substance is called). This video was to see if the same was true for miters, which are almost endgrain joints
@@stefanfyhn4668 "in fact he proved in the first that endgrain joints are much stronger" Nah, exactly the opposite- he has shown that of the weakest joints that all should be avoided - buttjoints - the endgrain one is the least bad, but he has also shown that it is waaaaayyyy weaker than the wood. "This video was to see if the same was true for miters, which are almost endgrain joints" Yes, and again he didn't show anything but the weakest joints that everybody (contrary to his claim) advices against using cause they are just that weak. Even funnier - this would be the perfect candidate for a splined miter (way stronger than a normal miter) or a lap-joint (an actual longgrain joint)
What about clamping force? I’d love to see a video on how clamping force affects glue bond strength. I’ve heard that over clamping can starve the joint from glue but I’ve never seen that myself.
Thanks for making a 2nd episode on it. I did see some famous woodworker felt insulted to be proven wrong on this topic, but some others welcomed your efforts with open heart and claimed that they learned from it. Sir you did Great Job for woodworking community. We are very thankful. Hope we learn more from you in future.
My experience, and I'm a hobby woodworker, is that the more accurate you can make any woodworking joint, the better. Thank you for your time and effort in doing these analyses. We all need to learn how to better flatten and square our wood, myself included!
As a renovation/trim carpenter in the field for 30 years. I’ve done some experiments on miters as well. In my experience it seems that the difficult conditions that southern New England provide really test your methods. I prefer to only build hard wood decks. Last deck I did was all ipe. I splined all my withers. I cleaned all the glue surfaces with acetone and used a total boat epoxy that is made for oily woods. I picture framed the deck, the stair treads, the hand rails and the built in bench. I tried bedding the picture framed deck in pl and used a lot of screws to immobilize the joint. I used table top hardware to fasten the handrail joint to let them move and the stair treads I used over sized holes with plugged fasteners to let them move as well. The desk has never been oiled. Here are 4 years later, the only miters that cracked were the deck picture frame that was glued and screwed to the point of excess. Everything that was allowed to move is still as tight as the day I did them. That made my mind up for me. I love the idea of really getting to learn more about woodworking, it really makes me a better carpenter. I don’t mind getting out some hand tools to do something, less dust and it’s almost as fast as power tools.
When I started making picture frames I did a very simple test by gluing one mitre joint together. After curing I could not break the joint with my hands. I reasoned that this would be strong enough for the purpose, particularly because the four joints each support each other. Since then I make all my picture frames by gluing the mitre joints. I haven't had a failure yet.
Yeah you've gotta think about what you're building and what stresses are actually going to be on it. A picture frame doesn't need to be strong enough to dance on and a table doesn't need to be strong enough to have a dance contest on.
Many thanks! An interesting result...but one I think needs to be better understood. One interesting (and fairly easy) experiment you can do is to use polarization to visualize the stress in most common plastics. If you take an L-shaped piece of acrylic, shine polarized light through it, and view it through another piece of polaroid - you can see the pretty rainbow patterns of stress within it. You should DEFINITELY do that - it's quite instructive! If you imagine a typical miter joint, the stress is MUCH greater on the inside corner than the outside. Interior corners concentrate stress PHENOMENALLY - which is why rounding those interior corners is a good idea when you can do it. When you try to pull open an actual miter joint by hand (as you do in the video) - the forces are building up selectively on the inside corner...and the outside corner is actually in compression. Glue can cope with HUGE amounts of compressive force. So applying forces in that way will cause the glue at the inside point to have MUCH more stress. Your test doesn't reproduce that. It applies the forces much more uniformly across the entire glued area. So you're right that the glue itself (when applied at 45 degrees to the grain) is stronger than on side grain and not as strong as as on end grain - but that misses the point about mitered joints and why they fail. So what's going awry here is that you're talking about glue strength - and the anti-miter people are talking about joint geometry strength and the way that forces within the joint are concentrated. A second problem is that your tests on inaccurately made miters was implicitly assuming that the inside of the miter was where the gap is...ie the sum of the two supposedly 45 degree interior angles adds up to less than 45 degrees. This places the stress that would be on the inside of the miter on the glue itself. But what if my error is in making those too cuts add up to more than 90 degrees - so that the gap in the wood is on the outside of the joint? In that case, the glue in the gap would be in compression and all of the force would be in trying to tear apart a much better wood-to-wood contact area. I believe that we're in a new era of joint making science because now we have CNC machines that can easily make high precision joints AND which can cut arbitrary curves - we can focus on the joint geometry more carefully - and there is more room for innovation. Some of the "dog-bone" joints that CNC milling machines make can control where the stresses in the material are - and I think that will ultimately matter more than the nature of the glue.
Modulate the moisture content (MC) of glued samples up and down and quantitate w/ a moisture meter? Examine how repetitive cycles (MC) influence miter strength? Loving this series!
Very informative video. There's another RUclipsr who's a commercial finish carpenter that has done this type of video using CA glue. In every test, the joint never failed. It always failed elsewhere on the piece.
I’m going to enjoy the wave of response videos to this one. I, for one, will keep using splines on mitered frames and boxes because they look darn cool.
I wouldn't suggest to ditch them, myself. As long as the splines are long-grain against the 45°, they will significantly strengthen the joint, regardless of how "perfect" the miters are cut and assembled. The long wood fiber is still much stronger than even the strength of the glue. Due to the small surface area of bonding, on a typical mitered corner, most still benefit greatly from that addition.
He alluded to preliminary results of tests with splines... But yeah. I hope he does continue the series to include interlocking traditional joints. It kinda sounds like he plans on doing much more Makes sense given where the series has started.
Well, you are doing the right thing cause the miter-joint is basically the weakest, followed by an endgrain-to-endgrain buttjoint. Using a spline will seriously increase the strength, or you could also use a half-lapped miter (if you do not like the look of a simple lapjoint) - both waaay stronger than a miter.
I really like your approach. As a mechanical engineer with 40 years of experience designing and building manufacturing equipment and about he same amount of woodworking experience you hit all of the check marks. You gave a better approach than I could have.
You are doing a great public service in producing this series. Supplanter ask why so many people with a math or engineering background are in woodworking. I believe that both background are creative or build something oriented. I also feel that this is why we can have an intelligent discussion on this subject, as we understand the scientific method being used and then the resulting conclusion's. I am looking foreword to the next video.
As a retired engineer wood working for over 40 years I appreciate the method and style of presentation. It has been my experience that taking a strong joint with a poor design or poor construction will not work. Conversely a weal joint used in a proper design well constructed subject to proper forces could last for generations. Flaws in materials, steel or concrete or wood, will fail much sooner subject to design, construction and forces applied. Thank you for this series. I have also enjoyed the response from some well known woodworkers that this series has generated.
Thanks very much for this trilogy that I hope you will expand. You have influenced my decisions with respect to joinery. I first started to question the common wisdom about the weakness of mitre joints a few years ago when I was making picture frames. I messed up on the size of one and thought that I would be able to pull it apart and dispose of it very easily. Pulling on the sides in an attempt to break it apart was much harder than I expected and left me wondering what was going on although I never followed up my observation. Thanks to you we now have quantitative and qualitative information about glued joints and no longer have to follow rules of thumb that are probably best described as mythology.
I used to just think you were mistaken, owing to a poor scientific theory. But then you called yourself an engineer, and now I at least just think you're a contrarian doing it for the subs. Glad to be able to sign off. Looking forward to your next video, 'Concrete Is Weaker Than Wood!!'
I think you have shown for your self why we say endgrain joints are considered weak. 1) in your first video shows that on endgrain glue ups the glue fails, where as on side grain the lignum fails. Thus on side grain the glue joint appears to be stronger than wood and endgrain weaker than wood. 2) While 3” glue ups would be common on endgrain, sidegrain would tend to be much much longer. I would think this would distribute the load over a greater area. 3) Geometry maters in the real world. Miter/endgrain would more likely be a small glue joint with a much longer lever overhang on either side of it. Side to side would more likely tend to be a long glue joint with much less of a lever working against it.
"3) Geometry maters in the real world." Yep - and that is why the miter-joint and end-to-end glueups are the weakest joints (contrary to his claims), as a good longgrain-joint maximises the overlap of the fibres while the glue replaces the task of lignin, making the overall joint stronger than solid wood.
Fabulous work! I fully endorse and appreciate your effort. It has erased some frustrating questions that bothered me for some time. Please keep the videos coming .
The parts of the "myth" most people cannot grasp is simple torque... E2E and Miter joints tend to have a glue line significantly shorter than the total length of the project, while side grain glue lines are almost always longer than the width. So the force at the joint is multiplied as you get further from the glueline...This is why Patrick emphasizes not to think about the actual numbers of the break strength...
Right. the old saying of it's not what you have but how you use it is the key. Wood is sold to us where the grain is parallel to the long side of a board. This is because trees grow much taller than they do wider. So we don't experience wood where the end grain that is longer than the side grain so all of our glueups that involve end grain are short and because of this, we have assumed the reason of a weak end grain joint was due to the end grain but in fact it's due to the small glue surface as well as how the joint is used in a project.
@@seephor "we have assumed the reason of a weak end grain joint was due to the end grain but in fact" No, nobody has assumed that. The endgrain joints simply are weaker. As even his videos show (despite his claims otherwise). He sadly doesn't compare the endgrain-joint to a single longgrain joint in the same application, he always changed the scenario to make the lignin fait instead of using any of the longgrain-joints we know are as strong as the wood it self.
Your glue studies totally rock! It just occurred to me that the reward incentive created by You Tube advertising will naturally lead to more and more of these wonderful, previously unexplored theories being tested and published. It has already greatly increased the availability of previously closely guarded trade secrets for the rapid advancement of "common tech". Thank you Patrick... I've subscribed! I am appreciating and rewarding all content creators who rock like you by liking and subscribing! The future of education looks brighter by the day.
Thank you!!! A couple of days ago I was wondering about gluing issues and I come across the first video, it has been a pleasure to listen and learn, please continue the series. thanks, again!
I want to remind everyone again, Mr. Sullivan is NOT saying any of these joints are stronger than any other type of joinery. He is merely tackling grain orientation's affect on glue strength. There were a lot of major RUclips woodworkers who made their own response to Part 1 that seemed to miss the point of these videos.
Wow! This is a really good assessment. I appreciate your thoughtfulness & testing methodology, as well as your interpretation & presentation of the results! 😁 Thanks for sharing!
Again, excellent. Can't wait for the next one. Still wanting to see how wood movement stresses the glue, though... Make an anti-kiln that controls humidity and make the relative humidity oscillate with a period of, say, 7 days, for a month or two or twelve? This might be a way to simulate many annual cycles in humidity in a reasonable period of time. - From an atmospheric scientist and woodworker
Actually, I could provide typical quantitative annual, synoptic (i.e. variations due to weather systems), and diurnal variations in humidity quantities of your choice for selected regions if interested.
Being a retired PhD shop teacher and owner of a picture framing business, I have known this forever. BUT there is a problem with end grain joints; dry joints. Apply the glue, clamp it tight, then remove the clamps, inspect the joint and the glue is gone. It penetrated deeply into the end grain leaving little in joint itself. My solution for picture frames was to apply glue to each side of the miter, press it into the end grain with my thumb, then apply another layer to make sure I had some squeeze out. No squeeze out, dry joint.
For a long time I have purchased picture/artwork frames at auctions since: A. Commercially available wooden ones are disappointing and B. Commercially available ones do not fit with our decor. So I buy frames likely 50 or more years old for reuse. Most of these frames are (presumably) hide glued, cross nailed and then the nail holes are filled. The number of miters that have failed glue joints are probably 75% or higher. The only things holding a large number together are the cross nails. So I hack-saw through the nails, drive them out then recut the miters down to fit the artwork/print/photo at hand. I use an accurate, dedicated miter cutting fixture. Depending upon the size, I may just glue with Titebond original and cross nail again. These should last the rest of my life. But with larger, heavier works... I will always further reinforce the miter. I'm working on mounting a rare 24" x 36" county map so with frame, UV glass and plywood backer (paper/foam archival mounting supplies are not a significant weight) so I'm dealing with a fair amount of weight hanging from stainless wire mounted at two points. Very interesting video. I'll keep an eye out for any regarding splined miters. Love the methodology.
I love how much care and detail you do for your videos. So far I've gotten to prove my brotherbwrong on glue joints end to end, but this was eye opening! Excellent job!!!!!
Another excellent video! I would say that most miter joints that people are concerned about being weak are for boxes and picture frames where the relative size of the ratio of glue area to leverage length is much smaller than say a table or cabinet top with a mitered surface done for decorative purposes. Also, most of the failures in the real world are at a different orientation than the lab tests here. I can't think of a simple way to adjust the test to be more in line with the hand demonstration.
Oh boy finaly someone is telling the truth !!! 32 years ago , at my woodworking school , i’ve lerned EXACLY what you’re showing with your tests 👏👍🏼 When i was saying that the end grain was strong , i was laughed at etc … Now i’ll point ouf your video and finaly have something to back me up 😜👏🇨🇦❤️
I don't have much to add other than my observation that your charts are astoundingly clear and easy to understand. I think my geometrics professor would really appreciate seeing this (the class was heavily focused on best practices for displaying data in a meaningful manner). Thank you once again for doing these tests and letting us see your results. Looking forward to more!
Wow, actual viable content on YT. Who would have predicted that? Another great analysis, great testing, and a very clear vid showing the results. THANK YOU.
Absolutely loving these videos! I can only guess the amount of work that goes into the research and video production. Thank you for the rich and practical insight you offer the community!
Thanks for your efforts in making these videos. If you run out of other things to test, I wouldn't mind knowing where baltic birch plywood joints fall on the strength scale compared to solid wood.
@@robandsharonseddon-smith5216 I'm a real novice here but are you saying the laminations, the wood itself, would separate or the glue line holding the laminations together? The glue is stronger but now factor in how impregnated the wood is with the glue being those laminations are quite thin.
@@dwightl5863 When plywood fails, it usually does so by delamination, failing along the glue line between the sheets first. It will be interesting to see what effect if any that has on the strength of joints made this way. I don't think it will be practically significant - this series is not going to change how people do woodwork but it is very interesting.
One of the really great reinforcements of this video for me is in allowing your glue joints time to cure properly. I've had too many mitre failures that are almost definitely a result of impatience. I've recently switched from trying to glue full frames in one hit to clamping up one corner at a time and the difference in success is immeasurable. Also gives you an opportunity to finesse that final joint if necessary. I spline a lot of my mitres, mainly for visual interest, but a practical test of their strength would be a great watch!
"I've recently switched from trying to glue full frames in one hit to clamping up one corner at a time and the difference in success is immeasurable." Gluing them all at once is easy - just do NOT use normal clamps but those straps that you can use all-around. Also, if you need stronger joints than maybe use a spline or a lapjoint (or if you don't like the looks - lapped miter joint) - they make the joint several times stronger.... well, basically anything is stronger than a miter-joint to begin with.
I'm sure that many people have already recommended it, but moving glued pieces between a damp environment, such as a unheated basement, to a dry environment multiple times over the course of a few months might sufficiently model seasonal expansion and contraction for the purposes of the video. It might also be interesting to leave glued pieces out in the elements and document how rain, snow, etc. weakens the joints.
People say miters are weak because they are. No one talks about side grain glue ups because no one glues up a sidegrain board as short as a typical miter joint. Typically it is always said about picture frames where they are usually at the end of a long torque arm
More interesting stuff. Another common cause for failure of a mitre joint is the joint being starved of glue. We were taught to apply the glue twice. I don't recall the recommended time frames, but when I'm making a carcase with mitred joints, (and I'm not being lazy) by the time I have applied glue to the 8 ends, it is then a good time to start applying the glue again. In terms of reinforcing the joint, it was surprising to me how much aadditional strength was achieved with a small piece of veneer in a saw kerf cut across the joint. I think Jeremy Broun makes a good point about strengthening joints. Thanks for the video. Cheers, David.
Yet another exceptional video using the scientific method to derive the facts about something we thought we knew! Well done Mr Sullivan,. Well done indeed! I presume from your methodology, maths, and commentary that you are an engineer, and most likely of either the structural or mechanical disciplines. It never ceases to impress me as to the large number of engineers who seriously enjoy wood working and who are willing to share so much of their professional talents in an essentially pro bono fashion. I am wondering if you have looked into the history of glues used in woodworking and considered how their properties would have effected our understanding of glue joints? For example, hide and fish glues slowly crystalize. These glues are referred to as cured based upon tactile observations and perceived adhesion. However, close examination of antiques built with such glues has shown that they do in fact crystalize and it is the hardness of these crystals and the strength of their fracture planes that provide the strength long after the plasticity of adhesion has gone. Such joints, in say old Windsor chairs, are often subject to multiple and varying stresses which help to "grind" out the crystalized glue. Restorers often use the slow crystallization process and heat sensitivity of these glues to their advantage. The joint in question is carefully heated to re-liquefy the glue, and if needed, more glue can be added to replace any lost over time. The result is a restored joint that is virtually indistinguishable from the original. PVA glues on the other hand maintain a significantly more elastic plastic quality, They are able to "move" with the joint longer than older glue types. Where as CA (cyanoacrylate) glues crystalized extremely rapidly. The have exceptionally strong adhesion and cohesion, but are highly susceptible to break down from vibration and thermal change due to their more brittle crystal lattice. Equally important is that the basic formula for all glues have changed considerably over time, especially the last 50 years or so. This means that what was true for craftspeople of the past, "today's teacher", may no longer hold true do to those changes. Unfortunately, the only source of information most have had available is what they were once taught and what they have experienced. Therefore, the observations of the past may well have been impacted by the conditions of that time, which would include different glue formulations. Since all teaching is based upon history, something readily show as a myth today, is often based upon relatively sound advice, and multiple factors, for its time of origin. I mention this as yet another set of conditions that explain why only relative, not absolute, comparisons make sense in the cases of your experiments. Personally, as an engineer myself, I can find not fault in the design of your comparative experiments. In fact, I could easily see where they could be developed into either an M.S. thesis or Ph.D. dissertation with the adhesives, lumber, and carpentry industries being very interested in providing grants. Thanks again for producing some incredible videos. Here is wishing you and yours the very best.
Your work is certainly interesting and does shine a light on this topic from a different angle. I would guess that the idea that end grain joints are weak has its roots in the era of hyde glue. I've been a professional woodworker for over 20 years. It's difficult for me to think of many clear instances of failed end grain joints. Mostly because I have avoided them. When I think about the many items I have disassembled, I can say that my experience is that the end grain joints fail more easier. Yes, there are times when end grain glued to face grains holds well, but I haven't found it reliable. The two examples I can think of are coped joints of a cabinet door and glued edges of plywood in a box. In the door example, the joint at the end grain portion is always much easier to break on the glue line than the face to face joint at the tongue. In the plywood example, when break apart a piece of plywood with its edge glued to the face of another piece, the end grain of the edge almost always remains intact and the face grain breaks out. On the topic of miter joints, I was taught that they are in-between end grain joints and face grain joints. I. The instance of a picture frame, the strength of it is 100% derived from the joint at the miters. Just glued miter isn't strong enough to resist those forces. However, mitered moulding attached to a piece of furniture rely on more than just the glued miter joint for strength. It is attached along it's length elsewhere. I will also add that clamping is very important for strength. Miters are notorious for being difficult to clamp effectively.
Great videos, when you get all the "other guys" making videos in response to your videos, it makes for healthy conversation. Can't wait to see the next installment.
Long, but it's Father's day. This is a good video, . From the beginning, we are taught and confirm gluing end grain is not as strong, miters not as strong as edge to edge, etc. There is truth to this, but as Patrick laid out, not necessarily accurate per real world needs and the math. The reality is end to end grain applications come from butting wood up against another piece with length vs. width adding leverage and detracting from strength per such a small surface. Edge to edge is typically harbors longer glue joints as well, so that adds to strength. But this video is mostly about miters that are somewhere in between the above. Typically it will be less surface area than edge to edge, and have other forces working against it with extended length, almost as long as end to end. End grain does absorb more moisture, which removes more glue (depending on type used) from the joint and starving it. So, all these factors are considered and used. My father did fine woodworking professionally, taught me quite a bit, I received a scholarship for it (bet you didn't know they existed), and did it professionally a while as well, making high end presentation cases out of exotic woods that have landed in Hollywood homes, even in one instance even a King. (At the time I was too young and arrogant to have any pressure placed on me in recognition of the magnitude of this understanding). I still have projects from 30 years ago and some of my father's from longer. Often woodworking is what was taught or told, hoping that was correct, and more in theory with real world evidence as Patrick indicated that often not available as the project is long gone. Regardless, the important factors are that the myth of joint strength is in question and there are other factors involved. As he continues I am waiting for the punch line and he nails it. (punny..). While my father taught me important tactics, joints and principles, I believe one of the most important was "quality". Quality starts with wood selection, not just aesthetics of pleasing grain patterns, but how you treat them differently and use them in your project. Believe it or not, I've had shop teachers starting as early as Junior High that would disagree with my woodworking theory, often applying a blanket for all species or types of projects, and others that tried to fail me because my project was "too good", and they thought my "father did it". Others like my high School teacher who I later found used me as an example to other students this was a viable trade, that was pretty cool learning of that. Even to my college professor, who at one point saw me standing at the shaper table looking at a piece of wood sitting on the table. He asked what I was doing, and I answered, "trying to summon the courage to do it". Now, in my mind I was walking through how to do this, what could go wrong and to be ready for it, because it was a complex operation on a piece of wood I just spent hours and of significant money on. I was not in fear of, or in question of my abilities and understood the approach, but instead knew this was that time many of us run into where we know it can go south quickly and ruin the most important piece of the project. So, he casually said, "oh, there is nothing to be afraid of, quickly grabbed the piece of wood and flipped the shaper on as I looked in horror. I should have stopped him, but did not, and sure enough, he gets to the end, has a lapse in focus and the shaper grabs it as his finishes and pops off the corner. He powers it off, hands it to me and says, "see, no issue, you can just touch that corner and all is well" then just walks away. Well, I was dumbfounded, but as my father taught me, a "good woodworker is not perfect, but knows how to hide mistakes". So, I start to go through all of the wood stock until I find a piece that matches grain and color perfectly, cut off the corner, glue up, and finish up on the shaper. After complete and assembled, I bring it back to the professor and showed him. At that point, he called everyone over, held it up and said that when cutting this piece, I had made a mistake, but this shows you "it is not about mistakes, but how you can repair them", then said, "try and see where the mistake is". I remember sitting there astounded that not only did he fail to say he was the one who damaged it, but that he said I actually made the mistake. Anyway, it's a long way to get to another component my teachers and other students would give me a hard time about; and that was setting up the tool. I would take considerable time (especially in a school environment where student mistreat equipment) to ensure the equipment is true, with the correct blade/bit and that they were sharp. Far more time than the completion of the cut itself. But the end result as my father reinforced was a perfect cut in terms of square, even, etc. and like here starts long before glue up. Patrick eluded to this in this video, also hitting another critical factor in talking about clamping pressure. This was another component my father implanted in my brain. In the instance of miters, I see many clamps out there that opens the door for failure just for complexity, timing, and potential to misuse them. A simple method he taught was using tape at each corner, which aligns them perfectly and provides the perfect amount of pressure that over 30 years late still looks as good as it did the day I did it. The important factor being those joints have to be perfect. but when they are, it makes assembly and glue up very easy, or at least, easier. Again, this was an excellent video because it helps woodworkers understand there is more to joinery than just the properties of the wood. While he did mention species used, he did not mention that this will vary per species since some are more porous than others. Most importantly he talked about factors like accurate miters and mentioned another video regarding clamping pressure. The reality is if your surfaces do not mate perfectly, and/or there is uneven pressure (not movement expected by the wood), the joint will be more prone to failure. Clamp pressure not only squeezes glue out, starving the joint, it also adds undue pressure that in some instances is intentional for the person to try and compensate for the poor joint. It closes it up and all is well. Well, maybe for a few months, year, or more, then with expected wood movement, will end up popping. Yes, you need to pay attention to types of grain and compensate as appropriate, and for many projects, end grain, or miters are weaker, not as much because of grain pattern, but how you approach it and the typical applications these joints are used. Physics don't always match, and you must recognize the project in it's entirety to understand strength, because as he said, standard testing of how much pressure it takes to break a joint may have nothing to do with the purpose or anticipated pressures and leverage the joint endures. Another component is talking about these splines. While the spline itself gains surface area, it also takes strength away from a standard miter because you have to remove the actual surface area of the miter, which detracts from its strength (and why biscuits are often not great). But again, depending on application, the forces to pop a miter are different and in some cased the spline while weakening the miter, may actually hold the miter together better from the anticipated forces working against it. So, the answer comes back to the what the miter joint is doing and the expected forces involved. In the end, sometimes it's better not to use splines, but like with all woodworking, it is more about quality of cut, than trying to reinforce something that was destined for failure. Don't get me wrong, I love splines and will often use them both for support (not strength) and in decoration. But while you need to consider all factors in woodworking, accuracy and the quality thereof is equally as important as recognizing the appropriate technique. A spline is not going to bail you out from a bad quality joint. As Patrick said, it is learned that in certain instances you take certain precautions, but that is not always, or even often true. This video is a first in a while that does not just follow what is recognized as common, and really investigates them.
Mr Sullivan. You’ve earned a subscription from me with your insightful and thorough analyses. And, I hereby name you Chief Pot Stirrer of the Woodworking Community! I’m looking forward to the 10 or so responses that will be gracing my feed.
This makes a lot of sense and is extremely helpful to see "how accurate" is "accurate enough"...thanks for sharing! Could you possibly simulate seasonal wood movement by placing the glued test pieces in a high humidity environment for 1 week them moving them back to a low humidity environment for another week to guage the difference in strength? obviously doesn't simulate years or decades perfectly, but might be a step towards proving/disproving the seasonal movement counter argument.
I love your humble and scientific approach to this! We have to many people who are to secure in their opinions. You only seem sure that it all depends... =)
I have seen furniture 100+ years old that violated the “rules” stay together, some of mine following the “rules” fail quickly. Thank You Keep up the good work
Wow, love your channel Patrick! You speak to my love of woodworking and my engineering background. Keep up your great experiments and videos. I very much appreciate your excellent work.
Fantastic job - I love these! My bet about the gapped results is that minor gaps can still allow the glue to connect the two faces of wood, kind of like mortar.
I've enjoyed both your test videos and the commentary from the likes of Marc Spagnuolo and Stumpy Nubs that have resulted. The testing is very well done and driving a lot of thoughtful science. On this video I caught a glimpse of your watch. You have great taste in time pieces, too!
So far, I am loving this series, the experiments and how the results challenge preconceptions. However, I do have a couple issues with the conclusion, and I think most of the pushback you've gotten comes from this: While you conclusion isn't wrong, I think it's incomplete, because the real cause of the "weakness" of edge and miter joints is based on practical issues in the shop. Basically, side to side and face to face joints feel stronger because we ask way less of them. They tend to have a lot of glue surface, and very little actual bending stress. end grain and miter joints? usually the opposite. Which is why we do halflaps and tenons and splines and whatever, to reinforce overstressed joints with wood fibers which are stupid strong, or at least extra glue surface. You do touch on this during the video, but don't really focus too much on it.
"Basically, side to side and face to face joints feel stronger because we ask way less of them. They tend to have a lot of glue surface, and very little actual bending stress." Only the middle part is accurate. He had a perfect opportunity to test a miter joint against a longgrain-joint like a lap-joint, but didn't do that. Why? Cause a lap-joint is much stronger.
Very interesting once again. What this hopefully proves is that glue joints are not a replacement for real joinery. 3-Dimensional structures made with wood will always have to rely on the strength of the fibers themselves, not the lignin or a glue joint. Curious to see your follow-up videos if you test cross-grain splines, long-grain splines like Owen’s plank, dowel joints, biscuit joints or even festool domino joints. I would love to see what you find out.
Thanks again for taking so much time and care to make another complex subject seem deceptively simple and easy to understand. I'm sure your videos will become legendary in the realm of youtube/woodworking presentations.
Excellent!! I like the fact that you stress woodworking skill; i.e., accuracy of cuts, as a major factor in the strength of the joints. This video, along with the previous one, was a real eye-opener for me. Thanks!
Thank you very much for adding a little common sense and empirical treatment to a very common subject riddle with misconceptions and carry overs from forgotten sources. Glue is effective in endgrain. The problem seems to lay in the definition of how how effective this is. Long grain glueups are as strong or stronger as the wood itself and that is the expectation. End grain glueups are many times weaker than uninterrupted long fivers. End grain joints are the wrong choice if you have the expectation of continuous strength over the length of a structural member. If you are doing marquetry, glue away!
Great video Patrick. Often we get hung up wanting our projects to last "forever" and knowing glue will eventually fail doesn't sit well- so we over-engineer as much as possible all while avoiding dreaded nails or screws...
It is such a testing that leads to a zig-zag-glueline to join wood end-grain to end-grain with no loss of strength of the fibers. The way the industry is joining wood.
Fantastic as always. I do think that the moment of force applied during the test should have been about the axis perpendicular to the face of the boards
There are many variables in the real world and only some were addressed here. One in particular that is not addressed is glue technique and I believe is as important as your physical joinery. The amount, age, coverage, working time, etc. all factor into overall strength. The quality of the glue job can have as much or even more significant impact than the quality of the joinery. I received a picture frame gift from a talented woodworker/artist decades ago. All joinery appeared perfectly cut to me. All corners were mitered and splined with nice contrasting wood. The piece sat on my wall for over a dozen years. Recently I noticed one of the corners fully separated. Closer inspection shows something I have seen before in failed pieces. The glue surfaces had dried (skimmed over) before assembly, resulting in a mechanical only joint. If these joints had not been splined they certainly would not have stayed together as long as they did. Overall, I believe that grain orientation is likely the least significant variable in the overall set of variables involved within the wood, joinery, overall woodworker skill, and subsequent dynamic life of your project.
I suspect the big reason we see so many miter joints fail is they're frequently used in a situation where there's not a whole lot of surface area glued and there's a decently long arm that can apply force. You cited the picture frame example. I think a lot of woodworkers have extrapolated behavior with the smaller, lower surface area joint to mean all miter joints are bad. It's all about leverage in those situations AND the amount of surface area. I wasn't all that surprised by the results of this because I have some pieces, like you, that rely on miter joints, although the way I typically use them is pieces with low surface area get splines (Picture frames), and with my larger pieces, I'll glue with a long cure time epoxy, so any gaps in the miter joint get filled with a glue that adds actual strength when it's in a gap (Unlike typical wood glues).
Isn't it true that nearly all miter applications are where the surface area of the miter joint is significantly smaller than the largest dimension of the final item? This returns to the idea that leverage allows assembly-wide stresses to overcome the small miter joints. Examples include boxes, picture frames, mouldings, etc.
Another great video, Patrick! Keep up the good work! Time to get some more popcorn for the discussion. I've actually been pleasantly surprised by how civil everyone in the woodworking community has been, even though they have different opinions.
Love it "miters aren't weak, your joinery skill might be though" Well done sir.
That is the only conclusion that is really accurate here.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the “power of leverage” comment, and I think it’s where both of these myths stem from. End to end and miter glue ups aren’t inherently weak; they just happen to be the configurations that result in the most leverage placed on them since wood is typically cut the longest in the direction of the grain. That’s a hard story for master woodworkers to instill into apprentices over generations, though, so it got boiled down to dogma of “these joints are weak”.
"Conventional Wisdom" often gets misunderstood and misapplied by subsequent generations.
The lab test mode is very different to the sample 'frame' broken by hand.
In the lab tests, the bending moment is across the weaker plane of the test pieces, i.e. you're bending across the thin section but with the mitre broken by hand, you're bending across the thick section. This means that wood section is inherently stronger in relation to the section of the joint (the wood is thicker, and the joint is thinner) and there is the added disadvantage of a stress raiser at the inner intersection that predetermines where the fracture will initiate -at the glued joint. in addition, the bending mode of a mitre bent that way is such that the fulcrum for the two opposing levers is on the outside of the joint and if you look at the resulting forces at the inside of teh joint, they will be orientated more along the grain axis rather than across the lignum.
As an engineer, I very much appreciate your methodical approach and your focus on relative strength (and failure modes) using samples of identical geometry. I can't help feeling that comparing the effects of geometry would teach us more, but I guess that your test equipment wouldn’t be able to apply sufficient load to break the joint if you rotated those samples 90 degrees and you would need to scale the geometry down.
Keep up the good work though. I enjoy the videos and the intelligent debate that stems from them.
This is a crucial point, thank you!
Very true, but probably irrelevant. Instead of loading a single miter, picture how miter joints are actually loaded in your projects. The shape of the final project is usually a closed loop of some sort, and the forces can't produce a large bending moment like in the sample he broke by hand. In practice, miter joints are subjected to tension and shear - the same forces produced in Patrick's test apparatus.
@@charlesenfield2192I agree that it's unlikely that a mitre would be used in an 'open ended' way like that and that mitres are part of a closed structure. These joints are most stressed by loads that cause the joint to open or close such as loads on opposing corners or opposing loads along opposite sides. These cause tensile stresses at the inner corners of two opposing joints and the outer corners of the other two.
My real point is not about mitres but about the effects of the joint geometry with respect to the width vs height of the glued section and the potential effect of stress raising corners at the interface. Patrick is suggesting that there are other aspects to consider in further studies, I'm proposing some.
I thought the same, the direction of forces exerted during his test are significantly different than his hands on demonstration. It would be tantamount to twisting the wood as opposed to prying. I appreciated his scientific approach and believe that there should be follow up research.
Came here to say the same thing.
Well, actually I came here to find someone else who said it better than I could and put an appreciative comment and thumbs up on their superior post.
I think an important 'real world' factor is the inherent difficulty in clamping miters, even well cut ones. In many instances we use band clamps which do little more than hold the pieces in position rather than apply a good clamping pressure.
Excellent video by the way. Thank you.
I make a ton of frames. I typically use a frame made of threaded rod and corner braces to clamp the frame but I have also used the type of band clamp with the plastic corners. You probably know the type I’m referring to. In my experience both theses types can exert tremendous pressure on a frame. The reason is the multiplication of the force vectors in all 3 directions. As you may be aware a wedge can exert tremendous force. In a typical frame glue up each of the 8 miters are effectively acting as wedges multiplying the force of the clamp it’s self. The tension on the miters is many times greater than a typical straight clamp can exert. There are actually 3 vector forces on each miter. One horizontal, one vertical and one diagonal. A typical clamp base only one.
To the extent that ease of clamping affects the fit of the joint, I agree, but Patrick already addressed that. High clamping forces can be used to close up a poorly-fitted joint, and that's hard with miters. However, the real problem is the poorly fitted joint. Well cut miters require very little clamping force to achieve full strength. Holding them in position is all that's required. This is easy to test if you care to. Cut four small samples from the same board with straight, square edges. Glue them together in pairs. For one pair clamp with a rubber band, and the other squeeze it has hard as you like with the clamp of your choice. Once cured, break them both. I doubt you'll perceive a difference.
This leads me to request a different test in the future. I've heard people suggest you can over-clamp, and "squeeze out all the glue", resulting in a weaker joint. I have no experience to suggest there's any truth to this one, nor given what I know about fluid mechanics, can I think of any way to actually squeeze out all the glue.
I loved you in Schitts Creek
I'm pretty sure that I've seen the myth of "clamping pressure" busted a few times here and there.
@@bobby-c7731 my first thought, lol
"For those few who don't love vector calculus..."
I for one have found vector calculus to be rather an acquired taste. Your videos, on the other hand, are easy to love.
well of course, it's all about the rate of change of the thingamajig in the oriented direction of the whatsit, when it comes down to it. Simple, really....
That's all well and good, but nobody is talking about vectoria claculus. After all, science is supposed to be gender neutral. ;-) LOL
@@MichaelOlsen-Engineer Well, this video is non-bindary.
As a physicist and woodworker, I love what you're doing with this series, Patrick Sullivan -- thank you for all the work you put into these so we all can learn more from your quantitative analysis.
It seems that a _lot_ of woodworkers have a strong background in math and engineering. Why _is_ that?
@@supplanterjim -- I suspect you're right that woodworkers skew STEM, perhaps because the technical barrier is sufficient to filter out many of the "crafts"-builders (
@@supplanterjim it might seem that way because you are looking at anecdotal information and may have a bias based on your environment where you observe woodworkers.
A bigger study with rigorous data collection that corrects for baseline and avoids common biases might reveal the full picture.
@@Keneo1 Ha ha ha! Was that _irony?_ Wonderful!
Let’s not forget the impeccable setup and camera work plus easy to understand charts. I thoroughly enjoy your presentations.
Again, a long overdue video. Thanks for your efforts and your science.
Well said Patrick. I appreciate your effort and demeanor. Recognizing that woodworkers are mostly intelligent people with a high standard of excellence is what makes the joy and challenges of woodworking so fulfilling. We appreciate what you are trying to do and thank you for your effort and spirit of excellence.
I would greatly appreciate a video on spline strength!
The force direction you use in your test, isn't usually the ones I have a problem with... The forces in a pictureframe or box are also at an right angle to the grain. The example where you break the miter with your hands, are example of this force. Could be interesting to see a test of this...
Great video, it's good to shake things up, especially myths. We think we know the truth, but really it's often just cultural handdown 😂
I think this is even more of an issue when simulating a "bad" miter joint. I think the plastic spacer slivers should be perpendicular to the applied forces, like they would be if they were in a mitered joint of a picture frame. Thus, in the test rig, you would use a long 3" sliver along the top of the joint horizontally, rather than the short vertical sliver that was used in the test rig.
Alternatively one could rotate the samples in the test rig by 90 degrees and test the breaking strength in the other direction, but then you do not get to compare results to the previous tests of end-grain and side-grain as the testing geometry is fifferent.
That's the problem with this test. It tests the strength of a miter joints in a direction that's irrelevant to the forces that most miter joints actually endure. The hand broken test at the beginning is actually more representative to the forces that people worry about on miters than the ones he carefully measures.
Thank you so much for your time and dedication to the art and craft of woodworking. You explode myths that have been dear to my heart for a long time and you do it with patience and clarity that easily dispels my previous assumptions. Kudos to you, Mr. Sullivan.
These videos are incredible. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I would love to see you bookend this series with a video that focuses more on actual geometry, aka practical application of joinery. It would me more of a “why certain joints are used in certain circumstances” than a scientific apples to apples comparison, but it seems to be one of the least understood aspects of woodworking.
If I recall, it was common wisdom that end grain "starved" the joint of glue. That is, the "straws" of the wood would "suck up" the glue much more readily in an end-grain joint--hence the idea of pre-sealing the end grain with glue, first. Maybe that's really the myth that we're dispelling here, and pre-sealing is clearly not necessary. (But maybe it's something to test, Mr. Sullivan!)
Sadly he does not actually show any longgrain-joints in the same situation cause then it would become apparent why they are used (hint: cause they are as strong as the wood itself). instead he chooses to not compare actual longgrain joints.
@@ABaumstumpf he already did that in part one. This one is for miters
@@ABaumstumpf in fact he proved in the first that endgrain joints are much stronger because the bond is more glue than wood fibers or lignin (or whatever the substance is called).
This video was to see if the same was true for miters, which are almost endgrain joints
@@stefanfyhn4668 "in fact he proved in the first that endgrain joints are much stronger"
Nah, exactly the opposite- he has shown that of the weakest joints that all should be avoided - buttjoints - the endgrain one is the least bad, but he has also shown that it is waaaaayyyy weaker than the wood.
"This video was to see if the same was true for miters, which are almost endgrain joints"
Yes, and again he didn't show anything but the weakest joints that everybody (contrary to his claim) advices against using cause they are just that weak. Even funnier - this would be the perfect candidate for a splined miter (way stronger than a normal miter) or a lap-joint (an actual longgrain joint)
What about clamping force? I’d love to see a video on how clamping force affects glue bond strength. I’ve heard that over clamping can starve the joint from glue but I’ve never seen that myself.
Thanks for making a 2nd episode on it. I did see some famous woodworker felt insulted to be proven wrong on this topic, but some others welcomed your efforts with open heart and claimed that they learned from it. Sir you did Great Job for woodworking community. We are very thankful. Hope we learn more from you in future.
I love this series, Patrick! So interesting and educational. Also creating some great discussions in the woodworking community. Keep it up! 👍🏼
My experience, and I'm a hobby woodworker, is that the more accurate you can make any woodworking joint, the better. Thank you for your time and effort in doing these analyses. We all need to learn how to better flatten and square our wood, myself included!
As a renovation/trim carpenter in the field for 30 years. I’ve done some experiments on miters as well. In my experience it seems that the difficult conditions that southern New England provide really test your methods. I prefer to only build hard wood decks. Last deck I did was all ipe. I splined all my withers. I cleaned all the glue surfaces with acetone and used a total boat epoxy that is made for oily woods. I picture framed the deck, the stair treads, the hand rails and the built in bench. I tried bedding the picture framed deck in pl and used a lot of screws to immobilize the joint. I used table top hardware to fasten the handrail joint to let them move and the stair treads I used over sized holes with plugged fasteners to let them move as well. The desk has never been oiled. Here are 4 years later, the only miters that cracked were the deck picture frame that was glued and screwed to the point of excess. Everything that was allowed to move is still as tight as the day I did them. That made my mind up for me. I love the idea of really getting to learn more about woodworking, it really makes me a better carpenter. I don’t mind getting out some hand tools to do something, less dust and it’s almost as fast as power tools.
When I started making picture frames I did a very simple test by gluing one mitre joint together. After curing I could not break the joint with my hands. I reasoned that this would be strong enough for the purpose, particularly because the four joints each support each other. Since then I make all my picture frames by gluing the mitre joints. I haven't had a failure yet.
Yeah you've gotta think about what you're building and what stresses are actually going to be on it. A picture frame doesn't need to be strong enough to dance on and a table doesn't need to be strong enough to have a dance contest on.
Many thanks! An interesting result...but one I think needs to be better understood.
One interesting (and fairly easy) experiment you can do is to use polarization to visualize the stress in most common plastics. If you take an L-shaped piece of acrylic, shine polarized light through it, and view it through another piece of polaroid - you can see the pretty rainbow patterns of stress within it.
You should DEFINITELY do that - it's quite instructive!
If you imagine a typical miter joint, the stress is MUCH greater on the inside corner than the outside.
Interior corners concentrate stress PHENOMENALLY - which is why rounding those interior corners is a good idea when you can do it.
When you try to pull open an actual miter joint by hand (as you do in the video) - the forces are building up selectively on the inside corner...and the outside corner is actually in compression. Glue can cope with HUGE amounts of compressive force. So applying forces in that way will cause the glue at the inside point to have MUCH more stress. Your test doesn't reproduce that. It applies the forces much more uniformly across the entire glued area. So you're right that the glue itself (when applied at 45 degrees to the grain) is stronger than on side grain and not as strong as as on end grain - but that misses the point about mitered joints and why they fail.
So what's going awry here is that you're talking about glue strength - and the anti-miter people are talking about joint geometry strength and the way that forces within the joint are concentrated.
A second problem is that your tests on inaccurately made miters was implicitly assuming that the inside of the miter was where the gap is...ie the sum of the two supposedly 45 degree interior angles adds up to less than 45 degrees. This places the stress that would be on the inside of the miter on the glue itself. But what if my error is in making those too cuts add up to more than 90 degrees - so that the gap in the wood is on the outside of the joint? In that case, the glue in the gap would be in compression and all of the force would be in trying to tear apart a much better wood-to-wood contact area.
I believe that we're in a new era of joint making science because now we have CNC machines that can easily make high precision joints AND which can cut arbitrary curves - we can focus on the joint geometry more carefully - and there is more room for innovation.
Some of the "dog-bone" joints that CNC milling machines make can control where the stresses in the material are - and I think that will ultimately matter more than the nature of the glue.
Modulate the moisture content (MC) of glued samples up and down and quantitate w/ a moisture meter? Examine how repetitive cycles (MC) influence miter strength? Loving this series!
Very informative video. There's another RUclipsr who's a commercial finish carpenter that has done this type of video using CA glue. In every test, the joint never failed. It always failed elsewhere on the piece.
I’m going to enjoy the wave of response videos to this one. I, for one, will keep using splines on mitered frames and boxes because they look darn cool.
I wouldn't suggest to ditch them, myself.
As long as the splines are long-grain against the 45°, they will significantly strengthen the joint, regardless of how "perfect" the miters are cut and assembled.
The long wood fiber is still much stronger than even the strength of the glue. Due to the small surface area of bonding, on a typical mitered corner, most still benefit greatly from that addition.
He alluded to preliminary results of tests with splines... But yeah. I hope he does continue the series to include interlocking traditional joints. It kinda sounds like he plans on doing much more Makes sense given where the series has started.
I'll still do traditional joinery, though. So pretty.
Well, you are doing the right thing cause the miter-joint is basically the weakest, followed by an endgrain-to-endgrain buttjoint.
Using a spline will seriously increase the strength, or you could also use a half-lapped miter (if you do not like the look of a simple lapjoint) - both waaay stronger than a miter.
Great content! One of the most impressive and useful resources I've found on the internet about this subject. Thanks!
I really like your approach. As a mechanical engineer with 40 years of experience designing and building manufacturing equipment and about he same amount of woodworking experience you hit all of the check marks. You gave a better approach than I could have.
You are doing a great public service in producing this series. Supplanter ask why so many people with a math or engineering background are in woodworking. I believe that both background are creative or build something oriented. I also feel that this is why we can have an intelligent discussion on this subject, as we understand the scientific method being used and then the resulting conclusion's. I am looking foreword to the next video.
As a retired engineer wood working for over 40 years I appreciate the method and style of presentation. It has been my experience that taking a strong joint with a poor design or poor construction will not work. Conversely a weal joint used in a proper design well constructed subject to proper forces could last for generations. Flaws in materials, steel or concrete or wood, will fail much sooner subject to design, construction and forces applied. Thank you for this series. I have also enjoyed the response from some well known woodworkers that this series has generated.
Thanks very much for this trilogy that I hope you will expand. You have influenced my decisions with respect to joinery.
I first started to question the common wisdom about the weakness of mitre joints a few years ago when I was making picture frames. I messed up on the size of one and thought that I would be able to pull it apart and dispose of it very easily. Pulling on the sides in an attempt to break it apart was much harder than I expected and left me wondering what was going on although I never followed up my observation.
Thanks to you we now have quantitative and qualitative information about glued joints and no longer have to follow rules of thumb that are probably best described as mythology.
I used to just think you were mistaken, owing to a poor scientific theory.
But then you called yourself an engineer, and now I at least just think you're a contrarian doing it for the subs. Glad to be able to sign off.
Looking forward to your next video, 'Concrete Is Weaker Than Wood!!'
I think you have shown for your self why we say endgrain joints are considered weak. 1) in your first video shows that on endgrain glue ups the glue fails, where as on side grain the lignum fails. Thus on side grain the glue joint appears to be stronger than wood and endgrain weaker than wood. 2) While 3” glue ups would be common on endgrain, sidegrain would tend to be much much longer. I would think this would distribute the load over a greater area. 3) Geometry maters in the real world. Miter/endgrain would more likely be a small glue joint with a much longer lever overhang on either side of it. Side to side would more likely tend to be a long glue joint with much less of a lever working against it.
"3) Geometry maters in the real world."
Yep - and that is why the miter-joint and end-to-end glueups are the weakest joints (contrary to his claims), as a good longgrain-joint maximises the overlap of the fibres while the glue replaces the task of lignin, making the overall joint stronger than solid wood.
I look forward to your future videos! I will come back periodically to check.
Fabulous work! I fully endorse and appreciate your effort. It has erased some frustrating questions that bothered me for some time. Please keep the videos coming .
I appreciate the addition of "simple joints." It helps clear up a lot of the issues from the previous video.
Would have been nice if he actually added any longgrain-joints. A Lapjoint really isn't hard to make yet many times stronger than endgrain joints.
The parts of the "myth" most people cannot grasp is simple torque... E2E and Miter joints tend to have a glue line significantly shorter than the total length of the project, while side grain glue lines are almost always longer than the width. So the force at the joint is multiplied as you get further from the glueline...This is why Patrick emphasizes not to think about the actual numbers of the break strength...
Right. the old saying of it's not what you have but how you use it is the key. Wood is sold to us where the grain is parallel to the long side of a board. This is because trees grow much taller than they do wider. So we don't experience wood where the end grain that is longer than the side grain so all of our glueups that involve end grain are short and because of this, we have assumed the reason of a weak end grain joint was due to the end grain but in fact it's due to the small glue surface as well as how the joint is used in a project.
@@seephor "we have assumed the reason of a weak end grain joint was due to the end grain but in fact"
No, nobody has assumed that. The endgrain joints simply are weaker. As even his videos show (despite his claims otherwise). He sadly doesn't compare the endgrain-joint to a single longgrain joint in the same application, he always changed the scenario to make the lignin fait instead of using any of the longgrain-joints we know are as strong as the wood it self.
@@ABaumstumpf If a joint fails at the glue line or in the wood, that is still the ultimate strength of the joint.
Thanks Patrick, your research is impeccable and enlightening. It has certainly changed my perception of the performance of glue joints.
Your glue studies totally rock! It just occurred to me that the reward incentive created by You Tube advertising will naturally lead to more and more of these wonderful, previously unexplored theories being tested and published. It has already greatly increased the availability of previously closely guarded trade secrets for the rapid advancement of "common tech". Thank you Patrick... I've subscribed! I am appreciating and rewarding all content creators who rock like you by liking and subscribing! The future of education looks brighter by the day.
Echo all below.. your videos are making me question about how I think about (based on my readings) and discuss the 'dogma' of glue joint strength.
Thank you!!! A couple of days ago I was wondering about gluing issues and I come across the first video, it has been a pleasure to listen and learn, please continue the series. thanks, again!
Just as good as the first video. Carefully thought out and clearly presented. This series is going to be bookmarked.
I want to remind everyone again, Mr. Sullivan is NOT saying any of these joints are stronger than any other type of joinery. He is merely tackling grain orientation's affect on glue strength. There were a lot of major RUclips woodworkers who made their own response to Part 1 that seemed to miss the point of these videos.
Thank you so much for this. You're changing woodworking forever
Wow! This is a really good assessment. I appreciate your thoughtfulness & testing methodology, as well as your interpretation & presentation of the results! 😁
Thanks for sharing!
Very happy to see a follow up to the first video. Exceptionally well thought out and presented. I’m a little wood-wiser as a consequence, thank you!
Again, excellent. Can't wait for the next one. Still wanting to see how wood movement stresses the glue, though... Make an anti-kiln that controls humidity and make the relative humidity oscillate with a period of, say, 7 days, for a month or two or twelve? This might be a way to simulate many annual cycles in humidity in a reasonable period of time. - From an atmospheric scientist and woodworker
Actually, I could provide typical quantitative annual, synoptic (i.e. variations due to weather systems), and diurnal variations in humidity quantities of your choice for selected regions if interested.
Being a retired PhD shop teacher and owner of a picture framing business, I have known this forever. BUT there is a problem with end grain joints; dry joints. Apply the glue, clamp it tight, then remove the clamps, inspect the joint and the glue is gone. It penetrated deeply into the end grain leaving little in joint itself. My solution for picture frames was to apply glue to each side of the miter, press it into the end grain with my thumb, then apply another layer to make sure I had some squeeze out. No squeeze out, dry joint.
I hope you'll be around to prove anything you wish. You are #1.
For a long time I have purchased picture/artwork frames at auctions since: A. Commercially available wooden ones are disappointing and B. Commercially available ones do not fit with our decor. So I buy frames likely 50 or more years old for reuse. Most of these frames are (presumably) hide glued, cross nailed and then the nail holes are filled. The number of miters that have failed glue joints are probably 75% or higher. The only things holding a large number together are the cross nails. So I hack-saw through the nails, drive them out then recut the miters down to fit the artwork/print/photo at hand. I use an accurate, dedicated miter cutting fixture. Depending upon the size, I may just glue with Titebond original and cross nail again. These should last the rest of my life. But with larger, heavier works... I will always further reinforce the miter. I'm working on mounting a rare 24" x 36" county map so with frame, UV glass and plywood backer (paper/foam archival mounting supplies are not a significant weight) so I'm dealing with a fair amount of weight hanging from stainless wire mounted at two points.
Very interesting video. I'll keep an eye out for any regarding splined miters. Love the methodology.
I love how much care and detail you do for your videos. So far I've gotten to prove my brotherbwrong on glue joints end to end, but this was eye opening! Excellent job!!!!!
Another excellent video! I would say that most miter joints that people are concerned about being weak are for boxes and picture frames where the relative size of the ratio of glue area to leverage length is much smaller than say a table or cabinet top with a mitered surface done for decorative purposes.
Also, most of the failures in the real world are at a different orientation than the lab tests here. I can't think of a simple way to adjust the test to be more in line with the hand demonstration.
Oh boy finaly someone is telling the truth !!! 32 years ago , at my woodworking school , i’ve lerned EXACLY what you’re showing with your tests 👏👍🏼 When i was saying that the end grain was strong , i was laughed at etc … Now i’ll point ouf your video and finaly have something to back me up 😜👏🇨🇦❤️
Very interesting video! I, too, like the idea that the skill of the woodworker might be at the root of the weak mitre glue joints. Thanks for sharing!
I don't have much to add other than my observation that your charts are astoundingly clear and easy to understand. I think my geometrics professor would really appreciate seeing this (the class was heavily focused on best practices for displaying data in a meaningful manner). Thank you once again for doing these tests and letting us see your results. Looking forward to more!
Wow, actual viable content on YT. Who would have predicted that?
Another great analysis, great testing, and a very clear vid showing the results. THANK YOU.
Absolutely loving these videos! I can only guess the amount of work that goes into the research and video production. Thank you for the rich and practical insight you offer the community!
Thank you so much Patrick for spending the time and sharing the conclusions.
Thanks for your efforts in making these videos. If you run out of other things to test, I wouldn't mind knowing where baltic birch plywood joints fall on the strength scale compared to solid wood.
This would be an interesting test as plywood has alternating grain directions!
@@Idefix70 And the laminations will likely separate too.
@@robandsharonseddon-smith5216 I'm a real novice here but are you saying the laminations, the wood itself, would separate or the glue line holding the laminations together? The glue is stronger but now factor in how impregnated the wood is with the glue being those laminations are quite thin.
@@dwightl5863 When plywood fails, it usually does so by delamination, failing along the glue line between the sheets first. It will be interesting to see what effect if any that has on the strength of joints made this way. I don't think it will be practically significant - this series is not going to change how people do woodwork but it is very interesting.
I love the scientific approach.
One of the really great reinforcements of this video for me is in allowing your glue joints time to cure properly. I've had too many mitre failures that are almost definitely a result of impatience. I've recently switched from trying to glue full frames in one hit to clamping up one corner at a time and the difference in success is immeasurable. Also gives you an opportunity to finesse that final joint if necessary.
I spline a lot of my mitres, mainly for visual interest, but a practical test of their strength would be a great watch!
"I've recently switched from trying to glue full frames in one hit to clamping up one corner at a time and the difference in success is immeasurable."
Gluing them all at once is easy - just do NOT use normal clamps but those straps that you can use all-around.
Also, if you need stronger joints than maybe use a spline or a lapjoint (or if you don't like the looks - lapped miter joint) - they make the joint several times stronger.... well, basically anything is stronger than a miter-joint to begin with.
Your work and reasoning is great. Yes, I'm a year late. But I've seen it.
Nice one with the sum from hell to infinity. I like those little gems hidden in plain sight.
Once again, love you analysis and approach. Thank you for the insight! I am curious to see the effect of splines on these miters.
I'm sure that many people have already recommended it, but moving glued pieces between a damp environment, such as a unheated basement, to a dry environment multiple times over the course of a few months might sufficiently model seasonal expansion and contraction for the purposes of the video. It might also be interesting to leave glued pieces out in the elements and document how rain, snow, etc. weakens the joints.
Great video and insight again Patrick. Thank you.
Congratulacions Come back!!! Bravo !!! Mr Patrick
People say miters are weak because they are. No one talks about side grain glue ups because no one glues up a sidegrain board as short as a typical miter joint. Typically it is always said about picture frames where they are usually at the end of a long torque arm
More interesting stuff. Another common cause for failure of a mitre joint is the joint being starved of glue. We were taught to apply the glue twice. I don't recall the recommended time frames, but when I'm making a carcase with mitred joints, (and I'm not being lazy) by the time I have applied glue to the 8 ends, it is then a good time to start applying the glue again.
In terms of reinforcing the joint, it was surprising to me how much aadditional strength was achieved with a small piece of veneer in a saw kerf cut across the joint. I think Jeremy Broun makes a good point about strengthening joints. Thanks for the video. Cheers, David.
The quality of this video is what RUclips is for
Yet another exceptional video using the scientific method to derive the facts about something we thought we knew! Well done Mr Sullivan,. Well done indeed!
I presume from your methodology, maths, and commentary that you are an engineer, and most likely of either the structural or mechanical disciplines. It never ceases to impress me as to the large number of engineers who seriously enjoy wood working and who are willing to share so much of their professional talents in an essentially pro bono fashion.
I am wondering if you have looked into the history of glues used in woodworking and considered how their properties would have effected our understanding of glue joints?
For example, hide and fish glues slowly crystalize. These glues are referred to as cured based upon tactile observations and perceived adhesion. However, close examination of antiques built with such glues has shown that they do in fact crystalize and it is the hardness of these crystals and the strength of their fracture planes that provide the strength long after the plasticity of adhesion has gone. Such joints, in say old Windsor chairs, are often subject to multiple and varying stresses which help to "grind" out the crystalized glue. Restorers often use the slow crystallization process and heat sensitivity of these glues to their advantage. The joint in question is carefully heated to re-liquefy the glue, and if needed, more glue can be added to replace any lost over time. The result is a restored joint that is virtually indistinguishable from the original.
PVA glues on the other hand maintain a significantly more elastic plastic quality, They are able to "move" with the joint longer than older glue types. Where as CA (cyanoacrylate) glues crystalized extremely rapidly. The have exceptionally strong adhesion and cohesion, but are highly susceptible to break down from vibration and thermal change due to their more brittle crystal lattice.
Equally important is that the basic formula for all glues have changed considerably over time, especially the last 50 years or so. This means that what was true for craftspeople of the past, "today's teacher", may no longer hold true do to those changes. Unfortunately, the only source of information most have had available is what they were once taught and what they have experienced. Therefore, the observations of the past may well have been impacted by the conditions of that time, which would include different glue formulations. Since all teaching is based upon history, something readily show as a myth today, is often based upon relatively sound advice, and multiple factors, for its time of origin.
I mention this as yet another set of conditions that explain why only relative, not absolute, comparisons make sense in the cases of your experiments. Personally, as an engineer myself, I can find not fault in the design of your comparative experiments. In fact, I could easily see where they could be developed into either an M.S. thesis or Ph.D. dissertation with the adhesives, lumber, and carpentry industries being very interested in providing grants.
Thanks again for producing some incredible videos. Here is wishing you and yours the very best.
Thank you very much for your valuable information. This is sure to assist me with my woodworking.
Boy you blew up the woodworking world with the last video. Great job. Awesome series.
Your work is certainly interesting and does shine a light on this topic from a different angle. I would guess that the idea that end grain joints are weak has its roots in the era of hyde glue.
I've been a professional woodworker for over 20 years. It's difficult for me to think of many clear instances of failed end grain joints. Mostly because I have avoided them.
When I think about the many items I have disassembled, I can say that my experience is that the end grain joints fail more easier. Yes, there are times when end grain glued to face grains holds well, but I haven't found it reliable. The two examples I can think of are coped joints of a cabinet door and glued edges of plywood in a box.
In the door example, the joint at the end grain portion is always much easier to break on the glue line than the face to face joint at the tongue.
In the plywood example, when break apart a piece of plywood with its edge glued to the face of another piece, the end grain of the edge almost always remains intact and the face grain breaks out.
On the topic of miter joints, I was taught that they are in-between end grain joints and face grain joints. I. The instance of a picture frame, the strength of it is 100% derived from the joint at the miters. Just glued miter isn't strong enough to resist those forces. However, mitered moulding attached to a piece of furniture rely on more than just the glued miter joint for strength. It is attached along it's length elsewhere. I will also add that clamping is very important for strength. Miters are notorious for being difficult to clamp effectively.
Wow, found my way here thanks to Steve Ramsey, and had to subscribe. Great content!
Great videos, when you get all the "other guys" making videos in response to your videos, it makes for healthy conversation. Can't wait to see the next installment.
Long, but it's Father's day. This is a good video, . From the beginning, we are taught and confirm gluing end grain is not as strong, miters not as strong as edge to edge, etc. There is truth to this, but as Patrick laid out, not necessarily accurate per real world needs and the math. The reality is end to end grain applications come from butting wood up against another piece with length vs. width adding leverage and detracting from strength per such a small surface. Edge to edge is typically harbors longer glue joints as well, so that adds to strength.
But this video is mostly about miters that are somewhere in between the above. Typically it will be less surface area than edge to edge, and have other forces working against it with extended length, almost as long as end to end. End grain does absorb more moisture, which removes more glue (depending on type used) from the joint and starving it. So, all these factors are considered and used.
My father did fine woodworking professionally, taught me quite a bit, I received a scholarship for it (bet you didn't know they existed), and did it professionally a while as well, making high end presentation cases out of exotic woods that have landed in Hollywood homes, even in one instance even a King. (At the time I was too young and arrogant to have any pressure placed on me in recognition of the magnitude of this understanding). I still have projects from 30 years ago and some of my father's from longer. Often woodworking is what was taught or told, hoping that was correct, and more in theory with real world evidence as Patrick indicated that often not available as the project is long gone.
Regardless, the important factors are that the myth of joint strength is in question and there are other factors involved. As he continues I am waiting for the punch line and he nails it. (punny..). While my father taught me important tactics, joints and principles, I believe one of the most important was "quality". Quality starts with wood selection, not just aesthetics of pleasing grain patterns, but how you treat them differently and use them in your project. Believe it or not, I've had shop teachers starting as early as Junior High that would disagree with my woodworking theory, often applying a blanket for all species or types of projects, and others that tried to fail me because my project was "too good", and they thought my "father did it". Others like my high School teacher who I later found used me as an example to other students this was a viable trade, that was pretty cool learning of that. Even to my college professor, who at one point saw me standing at the shaper table looking at a piece of wood sitting on the table. He asked what I was doing, and I answered, "trying to summon the courage to do it". Now, in my mind I was walking through how to do this, what could go wrong and to be ready for it, because it was a complex operation on a piece of wood I just spent hours and of significant money on. I was not in fear of, or in question of my abilities and understood the approach, but instead knew this was that time many of us run into where we know it can go south quickly and ruin the most important piece of the project. So, he casually said, "oh, there is nothing to be afraid of, quickly grabbed the piece of wood and flipped the shaper on as I looked in horror. I should have stopped him, but did not, and sure enough, he gets to the end, has a lapse in focus and the shaper grabs it as his finishes and pops off the corner. He powers it off, hands it to me and says, "see, no issue, you can just touch that corner and all is well" then just walks away. Well, I was dumbfounded, but as my father taught me, a "good woodworker is not perfect, but knows how to hide mistakes". So, I start to go through all of the wood stock until I find a piece that matches grain and color perfectly, cut off the corner, glue up, and finish up on the shaper. After complete and assembled, I bring it back to the professor and showed him. At that point, he called everyone over, held it up and said that when cutting this piece, I had made a mistake, but this shows you "it is not about mistakes, but how you can repair them", then said, "try and see where the mistake is". I remember sitting there astounded that not only did he fail to say he was the one who damaged it, but that he said I actually made the mistake. Anyway, it's a long way to get to another component my teachers and other students would give me a hard time about; and that was setting up the tool. I would take considerable time (especially in a school environment where student mistreat equipment) to ensure the equipment is true, with the correct blade/bit and that they were sharp. Far more time than the completion of the cut itself. But the end result as my father reinforced was a perfect cut in terms of square, even, etc. and like here starts long before glue up. Patrick eluded to this in this video, also hitting another critical factor in talking about clamping pressure. This was another component my father implanted in my brain. In the instance of miters, I see many clamps out there that opens the door for failure just for complexity, timing, and potential to misuse them. A simple method he taught was using tape at each corner, which aligns them perfectly and provides the perfect amount of pressure that over 30 years late still looks as good as it did the day I did it. The important factor being those joints have to be perfect. but when they are, it makes assembly and glue up very easy, or at least, easier.
Again, this was an excellent video because it helps woodworkers understand there is more to joinery than just the properties of the wood. While he did mention species used, he did not mention that this will vary per species since some are more porous than others. Most importantly he talked about factors like accurate miters and mentioned another video regarding clamping pressure. The reality is if your surfaces do not mate perfectly, and/or there is uneven pressure (not movement expected by the wood), the joint will be more prone to failure. Clamp pressure not only squeezes glue out, starving the joint, it also adds undue pressure that in some instances is intentional for the person to try and compensate for the poor joint. It closes it up and all is well. Well, maybe for a few months, year, or more, then with expected wood movement, will end up popping. Yes, you need to pay attention to types of grain and compensate as appropriate, and for many projects, end grain, or miters are weaker, not as much because of grain pattern, but how you approach it and the typical applications these joints are used. Physics don't always match, and you must recognize the project in it's entirety to understand strength, because as he said, standard testing of how much pressure it takes to break a joint may have nothing to do with the purpose or anticipated pressures and leverage the joint endures.
Another component is talking about these splines. While the spline itself gains surface area, it also takes strength away from a standard miter because you have to remove the actual surface area of the miter, which detracts from its strength (and why biscuits are often not great). But again, depending on application, the forces to pop a miter are different and in some cased the spline while weakening the miter, may actually hold the miter together better from the anticipated forces working against it. So, the answer comes back to the what the miter joint is doing and the expected forces involved. In the end, sometimes it's better not to use splines, but like with all woodworking, it is more about quality of cut, than trying to reinforce something that was destined for failure. Don't get me wrong, I love splines and will often use them both for support (not strength) and in decoration. But while you need to consider all factors in woodworking, accuracy and the quality thereof is equally as important as recognizing the appropriate technique. A spline is not going to bail you out from a bad quality joint. As Patrick said, it is learned that in certain instances you take certain precautions, but that is not always, or even often true. This video is a first in a while that does not just follow what is recognized as common, and really investigates them.
Very enlightening and helpful information. Thank you.
Thanks for an enlightening and well thought out video.
Mr Sullivan. You’ve earned a subscription from me with your insightful and thorough analyses.
And, I hereby name you Chief Pot Stirrer of the Woodworking Community!
I’m looking forward to the 10 or so responses that will be gracing my feed.
This makes a lot of sense and is extremely helpful to see "how accurate" is "accurate enough"...thanks for sharing! Could you possibly simulate seasonal wood movement by placing the glued test pieces in a high humidity environment for 1 week them moving them back to a low humidity environment for another week to guage the difference in strength? obviously doesn't simulate years or decades perfectly, but might be a step towards proving/disproving the seasonal movement counter argument.
I love your humble and scientific approach to this! We have to many people who are to secure in their opinions. You only seem sure that it all depends... =)
I have seen furniture 100+ years old that violated the “rules” stay together, some of mine following the “rules” fail quickly.
Thank You
Keep up the good work
Wow, love your channel Patrick! You speak to my love of woodworking and my engineering background. Keep up your great experiments and videos. I very much appreciate your excellent work.
Fantastic job - I love these! My bet about the gapped results is that minor gaps can still allow the glue to connect the two faces of wood, kind of like mortar.
Excellent. Please continue your experiments
Keep up the good work with this series.
I've enjoyed both your test videos and the commentary from the likes of Marc Spagnuolo and Stumpy Nubs that have resulted. The testing is very well done and driving a lot of thoughtful science. On this video I caught a glimpse of your watch. You have great taste in time pieces, too!
Awesome Series!!!
Mostly rubbish. Check my comment in first "glue myth video" so you can understand it better
So far, I am loving this series, the experiments and how the results challenge preconceptions.
However, I do have a couple issues with the conclusion, and I think most of the pushback you've gotten comes from this: While you conclusion isn't wrong, I think it's incomplete, because the real cause of the "weakness" of edge and miter joints is based on practical issues in the shop.
Basically, side to side and face to face joints feel stronger because we ask way less of them. They tend to have a lot of glue surface, and very little actual bending stress. end grain and miter joints? usually the opposite. Which is why we do halflaps and tenons and splines and whatever, to reinforce overstressed joints with wood fibers which are stupid strong, or at least extra glue surface. You do touch on this during the video, but don't really focus too much on it.
"Basically, side to side and face to face joints feel stronger because we ask way less of them. They tend to have a lot of glue surface, and very little actual bending stress."
Only the middle part is accurate.
He had a perfect opportunity to test a miter joint against a longgrain-joint like a lap-joint, but didn't do that. Why? Cause a lap-joint is much stronger.
Very interesting once again. What this hopefully proves is that glue joints are not a replacement for real joinery. 3-Dimensional structures made with wood will always have to rely on the strength of the fibers themselves, not the lignin or a glue joint.
Curious to see your follow-up videos if you test cross-grain splines, long-grain splines like Owen’s plank, dowel joints, biscuit joints or even festool domino joints. I would love to see what you find out.
Thanks again for taking so much time and care to make another complex subject seem deceptively simple and easy to understand. I'm sure your videos will become legendary in the realm of youtube/woodworking presentations.
Thank you very very much for this series sir. This series is important not just for woodworkers but to so many other disciplines!
Excellent!! I like the fact that you stress woodworking skill; i.e., accuracy of cuts, as a major factor in the strength of the joints. This video, along with the previous one, was a real eye-opener for me. Thanks!
Thank you very much for adding a little common sense and empirical treatment to a very common subject riddle with misconceptions and carry overs from forgotten sources. Glue is effective in endgrain. The problem seems to lay in the definition of how how effective this is. Long grain glueups are as strong or stronger as the wood itself and that is the expectation. End grain glueups are many times weaker than uninterrupted long fivers. End grain joints are the wrong choice if you have the expectation of continuous strength over the length of a structural member. If you are doing marquetry, glue away!
Real-world results, that everyone can generally rely on. Thank you for doing this.
Sadly no comparisons to actual longgrain joints - yet again.
Great video Patrick. Often we get hung up wanting our projects to last "forever" and knowing glue will eventually fail doesn't sit well- so we over-engineer as much as possible all while avoiding dreaded nails or screws...
It is such a testing that leads to a zig-zag-glueline to join wood end-grain to end-grain with no loss of strength of the fibers. The way the industry is joining wood.
Fantastic as always. I do think that the moment of force applied during the test should have been about the axis perpendicular to the face of the boards
There are many variables in the real world and only some were addressed here. One in particular that is not addressed is glue technique and I believe is as important as your physical joinery. The amount, age, coverage, working time, etc. all factor into overall strength. The quality of the glue job can have as much or even more significant impact than the quality of the joinery. I received a picture frame gift from a talented woodworker/artist decades ago. All joinery appeared perfectly cut to me. All corners were mitered and splined with nice contrasting wood. The piece sat on my wall for over a dozen years. Recently I noticed one of the corners fully separated. Closer inspection shows something I have seen before in failed pieces. The glue surfaces had dried (skimmed over) before assembly, resulting in a mechanical only joint. If these joints had not been splined they certainly would not have stayed together as long as they did. Overall, I believe that grain orientation is likely the least significant variable in the overall set of variables involved within the wood, joinery, overall woodworker skill, and subsequent dynamic life of your project.
I suspect the big reason we see so many miter joints fail is they're frequently used in a situation where there's not a whole lot of surface area glued and there's a decently long arm that can apply force. You cited the picture frame example. I think a lot of woodworkers have extrapolated behavior with the smaller, lower surface area joint to mean all miter joints are bad. It's all about leverage in those situations AND the amount of surface area.
I wasn't all that surprised by the results of this because I have some pieces, like you, that rely on miter joints, although the way I typically use them is pieces with low surface area get splines (Picture frames), and with my larger pieces, I'll glue with a long cure time epoxy, so any gaps in the miter joint get filled with a glue that adds actual strength when it's in a gap (Unlike typical wood glues).
Isn't it true that nearly all miter applications are where the surface area of the miter joint is significantly smaller than the largest dimension of the final item? This returns to the idea that leverage allows assembly-wide stresses to overcome the small miter joints. Examples include boxes, picture frames, mouldings, etc.
Another great video, Patrick! Keep up the good work! Time to get some more popcorn for the discussion. I've actually been pleasantly surprised by how civil everyone in the woodworking community has been, even though they have different opinions.