This is how my father, a carpenter, worked in Tuscany (Italy). All of his furniture pieces were built using this method. He would build the furniture in his shop, make sure everything fit. He would then disassemble it and have it hauled (on mule-back) to the client in some distant village and re-assemble it - only then would he add the glue (on the dowel only). Those pieces of furniture are still in everyday use 70 years later.
Great story. My great great grandfather took his family to America from Liguria (Genoa) in 1869. He wasn't a carpenter to my knowledge. America had recognized the sovereignty of Italy as a country only in 1860. I visited the village in 2018. It's still just a little village with no commercial enterprises at all, not even a market stall. I applied for recognition of Italian citizenship in the USA and received it in 2019. It's quite an emotional feeling to come back full circle to your heritage.
@@deemdoubleu I think if you wanted to make knock-down joinery, you would use a tusked tenon joint. Probably not as strong, but easily disassembled and suitable for tables, sideboards, etc. A tap with a hammer on the tusk tightens up any wobbly joints.
With this kind of care, logic, love, attention, craft - perfection could be a pleasant afterthought, you never know. My esteem for Master Paul Sellers knows no bounds.
I have been a subscriber to paul for a long time . years in fact . i must say without being rotten ,that when he changed over to the company that NOW manages his affairs I think ,in my humble opinion,that the quality of his content deteriorated. it all seems about making money now . he never gave off that vibe before this lot ,whoever they are,got involved with him . Thank you anyway paul for ypour past services to woodwork teaching . i wish nothing but the best for you.
This is exactly the information I was looking for - making some gates for a driveway & was concerned an unpegged tenon wouldn't remain rigid & allow the gates to droop. This should ensure that doesn't happen. Thanks.
Hey Paul, I've watched your videos for about a year now and I subscribed to your channel today. I've never subscribed to a youtube channel before (in spite of having had an account for years) but I heard you had asked your viewers to subscribe, and... well it was hard to say no considering all that you have offered me. Thanks again Paul.
Paul, you are an international treasure! Thank you so much for the top quality content and for sharing your considerable wisdom! I know this may sound a bit sarcastic, but I am being completely sincere. I truly enjoy your videos, your personality, and the way that you convey information. So concise and earnest!
Paul, I would love to see you make a video on sharpening bits for the brace an bit. There isn't much out there on them. I enjoyed your video here very much as well. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Paul, love your vids. I've also bought your dvds and book. Can't understand why these people don't trust the draw bore method, thinking that it weakens the joint. It tightens the joint a treat. As you rightly said, thousands of artisans have been using the method for centuries. Best teacher around.
Even if you made it with a screws it would be extremely strong. A lap or bridal joint similar to that with just screws would be extremely strong as well. Fools talking about it not being strong enough are deluded about strength. If they put a load large enough to break the table top and then the stiles and rails they are a special type of person.
Man, I just did this on a breadboard end for my kitchen table, and drilled right through. :( Needless to say, it wasn't as tight as I would have hoped. At least now I know for next time. Thanks so much for teaching all of us the right way to do woodworking. You are a great teacher.
I love to see you working. His competence and his quiet transmit something different and makes everything look easy. I have no shop and no work with wood but I am a lover of wood. Congratulations.
Great video once again. I recently started watching your videos and I am hooked, And they already helped me a lot on my carpentry/woodworking journey. Thanks!
I learned this with timberframe, and we only used 1/8" if I recall correctly. Watched this to see exactly how much offset would be appropriate for smaller joins. Of course we didn't use any glue. Excellence in fine wood working!
Thank you so much for posting these videos - it is an education - can't wait for the weekend to go and practice! I am planning on building a green oak traditional cart shed. Think I'd best practice on some cheap softwood first eh!!!
SOY SEBASTIAN DE JAULAS ARTESANALES DE ESPAÑA (MALLORCA) SIMPLEMENTE AGRADECEROS TODO LO QUE HE PODIDO APRENDER DE USTEDES QUE ME E SUSCRITO Y DESEAROS FELIZ AÑO 2020
Dear sir, as a novice woodworker I was about to build my first workbench when I came across these videos about drawbore method.Do you think this method will work for a workbench? I will be using 4×5 & 3×4 sized timber. If this is possible could you propose a thickness for the dowels and the offset value? Your thoughts would be of great help.
Paul thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge. can you do an instructional video on how to do the Dowel Maker you use? o saw lie Nielsen but I cannot afford it. thanks and best regards
So you prefer to chip off the excess PVA glue after it's set rather than wipe it off with a wet rag immediately? I've tried both, the latter tends to contaminate the grain with the thinned-out glue, and the former tends to rip up the fibres as it's prised off. I'd be interested to know how a proper woodworker deals with this.
Gaf It seems the sweet spot for taking glue off is about 20-30 min after set. It's pretty pliable and kind of rubbery and comes off without a lot of contamination to the wood.
Gaf Don't use PVA glue. I use hide glue. Most of the time I use hot hide glue. Liquid hide glue like Old Brown Glue is much easier to use. Hide glues have no effect on finishes. Wipe the excess with a rag damped with cold water and you are done. Hide glue isn't suitable for outdoor pieces though. It is possible to reverse the bond with heat and water.
Gaf A sharp 1" chisel into the corner following both flat faces and cutting through the leather hard glue has worked for me for 50 years. No torn grain and no glue residue. Not gonna change now. i hate wet rags smearing the glue and raising the grain. Forget that. Neither do I like ideas like wrapping with masking tape. its silly.
I'm not much of a hand tool person. So, I have a question. If not using a drill press to make sure the through hole on the mortise and tenon boards, how are you sure that it is not angled? For example, you start your hole 1/16th higher on the tenon but on the other side end up with something different, like 1/16th lower. Wouldn't this cause an issue? Thanks
The idea with a drawbored mortise and tenon is that the holes are offset by 1/16. With the hole in the tenon being 1/16th nearer to the shoulder of the tenon so that when the pointed wooden pin enters the mortise piece it passes through a tenon and this pulls the shoulders of the tenon tight to the mortise piece. It doesn’t really matter whether the hole is perfectly perpendicular at all.
Great video, I was told by a much more experienced WW that using a drawbore in a M/T joint would weaken the tenon. It was for a workbench so it was in some decent sized wood, I didn't add them and am starting to second guess myself for listening. The bench is still rock solid with just glue and the joints were nice and tight to begin with?? Any thoughts? I would also like to hear your thoughts and how to clean the wood glue like GAF below.
Pat M Fraid he was wrong. At one time, before the screw-thread, every mortise and tenon relied on the draw-bore method. Surely two hundred thousand woodworkers can't have been wrong.
The glue joint will always be stronger than drawbore joint (at least when you have some long grain against long-grain), simply because it's always wood that would break there, not the glue (at least with modern PVA glues). Drawbore joint is self-tightening, something you don't have with glued joints without trickery. With drawbore joint you don't need to have 6ft long clamps (or 2x 3ft) for dinner table construction etc.
These are great points all, and with smaller m/t joints I think it is possible to weaken and break them more easily but in a large tenon which is 1" thick by 3" long probably not as likely. The gluing of long grain to long grain is what is happening in all my joints so I think the bench will be fine for a loong time to come.
MichaelKingsfordGray For it to split there would need to be room for expansion yes? For that split to be large enough to weaken the joint, it would need to be more than just a little room from, say, a taper on the tenon. If your tenon is fit properly then there would be no room for it to separate. There are still buildings standing (that used this method) without a single screw or glue located in the joints. The real strength of this joint is the dowel seating the shoulder on tightly.
+MichaelKingsfordGray I think you are right and paper is not a fair comparison because the fibers run in all directions, whereas wood runs all fibres parallel. However, when the tenon will crack, it will most likely crack on one side first. This will split the the tenon apart and thus wedge the tenon inside the mortise while relieving most of the pressure on the dowel at the same time. So with more force on the mortise/tenon holding it in place, and relieved stress on the dowel/tenon I don't think the forces will be high enough to actually make the second split then stripping out a full 10mm slot.
I don't think you mentioned the main advantage of a drawbored mortise and tenon joint: there is no need to use clamps for the glue up! This is especially nice when doing something large and not having enough clamps in the workshop. Otherwise, there is little point in the extra effort required to drawbore the joint, but not needing to clamp the piece makes it well worth the effort in certain cases where clamping is impractical...
I'm amazed that you can offset the hole by as much as 1/16 inc. I would think that the dowel would not want to go through that. The interwebz has some cross sections of draw bores: www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1436&bih=806&q=drawbore+cross+section&btnG=Search+by+image&oq=&gs_l=&gws_rd=ssl#gws_rd=ssl&imgrc=k6gP-VgqNyvyUM%3A
PiperCub49 because that does not result in the additional tension force of the draw bore. Drilling right through would give you a through-bore with zero clamping force.
PiperCub49 It wouldn't draw the shoulders up and neither does the peg bend and create the tension you want. If you go to paulsellers.com you can see more on my blog on this issue there.
You are so direct and to the point, showing all that’s needed, wasting no time. You are the best. Thank you.
This is how my father, a carpenter, worked in Tuscany (Italy). All of his furniture pieces were built using this method. He would build the furniture in his shop, make sure everything fit. He would then disassemble it and have it hauled (on mule-back) to the client in some distant village and re-assemble it - only then would he add the glue (on the dowel only). Those pieces of furniture are still in everyday use 70 years later.
That makes a lot of sense, the dowel could be drilled out for disassembly if ever needed.
My grandfather built furniture using similar methods 100 year ago and they are still going strong today.
Great story. My great great grandfather took his family to America from Liguria (Genoa) in 1869. He wasn't a carpenter to my knowledge. America had recognized the sovereignty of Italy as a country only in 1860. I visited the village in 2018. It's still just a little village with no commercial enterprises at all, not even a market stall. I applied for recognition of Italian citizenship in the USA and received it in 2019. It's quite an emotional feeling to come back full circle to your heritage.
@@deemdoubleu I think if you wanted to make knock-down joinery, you would use a tusked tenon joint. Probably not as strong, but easily disassembled and suitable for tables, sideboards, etc. A tap with a hammer on the tusk tightens up any wobbly joints.
The way to make the dowel : amazingly simple. Thank you.
That was incredible.
Another bonus, to me, is one can use a different colored dowel to add a bit of color. Thank you for this class.
With this kind of care, logic, love, attention, craft - perfection could be a pleasant afterthought, you never know. My esteem for Master Paul Sellers knows no bounds.
Dowel- maker, card scraper, avoiding use of power tools - much impressed!
I have been a subscriber to paul for a long time . years in fact . i must say without being rotten ,that when he changed over to the company that NOW manages his affairs I think ,in my humble opinion,that the quality of his content deteriorated. it all seems about making money now . he never gave off that vibe before this lot ,whoever they are,got involved with him . Thank you anyway paul for ypour past services to woodwork teaching . i wish nothing but the best for you.
This is exactly the information I was looking for - making some gates for a driveway & was concerned an unpegged tenon wouldn't remain rigid & allow the gates to droop.
This should ensure that doesn't happen.
Thanks.
I keep watching your videos over and over. They are so educational
When the world runs out of electricity, Paul Sellers will be the only woodworker left working as though nothing had happened.
I would bet Tom Figden will be by his side.
Stupid comment. Go see Mr Chickadee for REAL woodworking WITHOUT ANY power.
@@738polarbear oh dear someone is offended because someone else had an opinion.... you really are a fool
Hey Paul, I've watched your videos for about a year now and I subscribed to your channel today. I've never subscribed to a youtube channel before (in spite of having had an account for years) but I heard you had asked your viewers to subscribe, and... well it was hard to say no considering all that you have offered me. Thanks again Paul.
Paul, you are an international treasure! Thank you so much for the top quality content and for sharing your considerable wisdom!
I know this may sound a bit sarcastic, but I am being completely sincere. I truly enjoy your videos, your personality, and the way that you convey information. So concise and earnest!
Paul is such a nice person . It is a pleasure to watch and listen to his instructions .
Paul, I would love to see you make a video on sharpening bits for the brace an bit. There isn't much out there on them. I enjoyed your video here very much as well. Thank you for sharing.
So elengant and yet simple once the process is revealed. Thank you
Best woodworking tutorials on RUclips. Thank you.
Pleasure to watch you Paul and thats such a simple trick with the offset hole.
Hi Paul, love your vids. I've also bought your dvds and book. Can't understand why these people don't trust the draw bore method, thinking that it weakens the joint. It tightens the joint a treat. As you rightly said, thousands of artisans have been using the method for centuries. Best teacher around.
Even if you made it with a screws it would be extremely strong. A lap or bridal joint similar to that with just screws would be extremely strong as well.
Fools talking about it not being strong enough are deluded about strength. If they put a load large enough to break the table top and then the stiles and rails they are a special type of person.
Man, I just did this on a breadboard end for my kitchen table, and drilled right through. :( Needless to say, it wasn't as tight as I would have hoped. At least now I know for next time. Thanks so much for teaching all of us the right way to do woodworking. You are a great teacher.
This takes me back to woodwork lessons at school. Not an electric contraption in sight.
I love to see you working.
His competence and his quiet
transmit something different and makes everything look easy.
I have no shop and no work with wood
but I am a lover of wood.
Congratulations.
As always your skill with hand tools is spot on. Thanks for a great video
Wow!
Mr Sellers you never cease to amaze me!!!
Your skill is incredible!!!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge. =)
Thanks Mr. Sellers for sharing to the world!!!
simple and well explained... very easy to listen to you mate thanks
of all the things he did, i am blown away at how he made the dowl. who would have thought it was so easy.
offsetting the holes, so simple, but I'd never have thought of it
Invaluable tips Paul…many thanks for sharing 👍
Great video once again. I recently started watching your videos and I am hooked, And they already helped me a lot on my carpentry/woodworking journey. Thanks!
You truly are a wonderfully talented craftsman and a very giving man to share your knowledge. Thank you
Every video for me as an apprentice makes me more and more confident on using the knowledge you give us to create fantastic work :D thank you Paul
Thanks again Paul for another great lesson - simple and straight forward
Scott
The steel to make the tenon is just awesome... Thanks for sharing
just what i was looking for. have an old tenon to fit to a new piece of wood. will be challenging.
Splendid work and explanation so inspiring
Thank you Mr. Sellers You are an inspiration to me.
Another informative video. Thanks. I love watching you work Paul.
Thank you Paul for a great video. I love you style and how informative the videos are.
Very nicely explained and easy to follow just like all of your videos.
I learned this with timberframe, and we only used 1/8" if I recall correctly. Watched this to see exactly how much offset would be appropriate for smaller joins. Of course we didn't use any glue. Excellence in fine wood working!
Thank you. Always instructional and practical.
Thank you for yet another informative masterclass.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
You always make it look so easy and no doubt it is. It would be nice to see the finished table if that would be ok.
Thank you so much for posting these videos - it is an education - can't wait for the weekend to go and practice! I am planning on building a green oak traditional cart shed. Think I'd best practice on some cheap softwood first eh!!!
Love the dowel making.
Learning so much from your videos. Thank you.
I've never seen this before this is amazing
You are a living treasure.
Beautiful jointery and with hand tool's on top of that.
Thanks for another simple and informative video.
SOY SEBASTIAN DE JAULAS ARTESANALES DE ESPAÑA (MALLORCA) SIMPLEMENTE AGRADECEROS TODO LO QUE HE PODIDO APRENDER DE USTEDES QUE ME E SUSCRITO Y DESEAROS FELIZ AÑO 2020
Wow , I learned something today. Ty. Happy Thanksgiving.
I usually fill the mortice with a piece of scrap while im drilling to prevent the inside wall from splintering out!
Wonderful video! Thank you, Paul Sellers
He does, in 11 minutes, what would take me an hour with power tools. Nice.
.....soooo nice !!!! thank YOU sooooo much !!!!!!!
Very good!
You are a master!
Thank you!
Another wonderful video, thank you.
Really nice work
Great video, thanks for posting. Would there be any problems drilling the rail holes before cutting the mortices?
That was great, as usual. Thanks
thank you mr sellers love your info
I would also line the grain up on the pin.
hi paul do u sell plans for the chairs I was born in birmingham what part are u from love the old tools we should still be using them today
here after looking at the interesting construction on the rondel dagger in the Wallace collection covered in Tod's recent video
Magnificent to watch
Very nice
I was taught to turn the grain of the dowel opposite of the grain of the tenon. Is that correct or wrong? Or does it really matter?
would there be a concern about breaking out the center of the tenon? How deep/shallow would you place the bore?
Pass Me By all the fibres will be supported as the tenon is inside the mortice hole. halfway from the shoulder to the edge
Great video Paul. Quick question- you prefer to cut the glue when it dries rather than wipe away when it is still wet? Cheers
Always my respect !!!
Verlo trabajar es un placer.
Dear sir, as a novice woodworker I was about to build my first workbench when I came across these videos about drawbore method.Do you think this method will work for a workbench?
I will be using
4×5 & 3×4 sized timber.
If this is possible could you propose a thickness for the dowels and the offset value?
Your thoughts would be of great help.
great skills !
Good video! Good luck.
any idea where one can find a brace and bits?
Beautiful
Paul thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge. can you do an instructional video on how to do the Dowel Maker you use? o saw lie Nielsen but I cannot afford it. thanks and best regards
Hi Cri, Paul made a blog on the poor's man dowel maker. I will link that to you, hopefully it helps. paulsellers.com/2013/07/poor-mans-dowel-maker/
Remember the de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito and the marvelous English Woodworker. 1 thumb up as usual.
very nice
So you prefer to chip off the excess PVA glue after it's set rather than wipe it off with a wet rag immediately? I've tried both, the latter tends to contaminate the grain with the thinned-out glue, and the former tends to rip up the fibres as it's prised off. I'd be interested to know how a proper woodworker deals with this.
Gaf It seems the sweet spot for taking glue off is about 20-30 min after set. It's pretty pliable and kind of rubbery and comes off without a lot of contamination to the wood.
Gaf Don't use PVA glue. I use hide glue. Most of the time I use hot hide glue. Liquid hide glue like Old Brown Glue is much easier to use. Hide glues have no effect on finishes. Wipe the excess with a rag damped with cold water and you are done. Hide glue isn't suitable for outdoor pieces though. It is possible to reverse the bond with heat and water.
Gaf A sharp 1" chisel into the corner following both flat faces and cutting through the leather hard glue has worked for me for 50 years. No torn grain and no glue residue. Not gonna change now. i hate wet rags smearing the glue and raising the grain. Forget that. Neither do I like ideas like wrapping with masking tape. its silly.
I'm not much of a hand tool person. So, I have a question. If not using a drill press to make sure the through hole on the mortise and tenon boards, how are you sure that it is not angled? For example, you start your hole 1/16th higher on the tenon but on the other side end up with something different, like 1/16th lower. Wouldn't this cause an issue? Thanks
The idea with a drawbored mortise and tenon is that the holes are offset by 1/16. With the hole in the tenon being 1/16th nearer to the shoulder of the tenon so that when the pointed wooden pin enters the mortise piece it passes through a tenon and this pulls the shoulders of the tenon tight to the mortise piece. It doesn’t really matter whether the hole is perfectly perpendicular at all.
Hi Paul, stupid question but could you tell why we have to offset the hole?
It pulls the tenon tighter into the mortise.
wow clean and thro!!!
Perfect
Is this superior to wedges?
Great video, I was told by a much more experienced WW that using a drawbore in a M/T joint would weaken the tenon. It was for a workbench so it was in some decent sized wood, I didn't add them and am starting to second guess myself for listening. The bench is still rock solid with just glue and the joints were nice and tight to begin with?? Any thoughts? I would also like to hear your thoughts and how to clean the wood glue like GAF below.
Pat M Fraid he was wrong. At one time, before the screw-thread, every mortise and tenon relied on the draw-bore method. Surely two hundred thousand woodworkers can't have been wrong.
The glue joint will always be stronger than drawbore joint (at least when you have some long grain against long-grain), simply because it's always wood that would break there, not the glue (at least with modern PVA glues). Drawbore joint is self-tightening, something you don't have with glued joints without trickery. With drawbore joint you don't need to have 6ft long clamps (or 2x 3ft) for dinner table construction etc.
These are great points all, and with smaller m/t joints I think it is possible to weaken and break them more easily but in a large tenon which is 1" thick by 3" long probably not as likely. The gluing of long grain to long grain is what is happening in all my joints so I think the bench will be fine for a loong time to come.
MichaelKingsfordGray For it to split there would need to be room for expansion yes? For that split to be large enough to weaken the joint, it would need to be more than just a little room from, say, a taper on the tenon. If your tenon is fit properly then there would be no room for it to separate. There are still buildings standing (that used this method) without a single screw or glue located in the joints. The real strength of this joint is the dowel seating the shoulder on tightly.
+MichaelKingsfordGray I think you are right and paper is not a fair comparison because the fibers run in all directions, whereas wood runs all fibres parallel. However, when the tenon will crack, it will most likely crack on one side first. This will split the the tenon apart and thus wedge the tenon inside the mortise while relieving most of the pressure on the dowel at the same time.
So with more force on the mortise/tenon holding it in place, and relieved stress on the dowel/tenon I don't think the forces will be high enough to actually make the second split then stripping out a full 10mm slot.
"Done and Dusted"!
I don't think you mentioned the main advantage of a drawbored mortise and tenon joint: there is no need to use clamps for the glue up!
This is especially nice when doing something large and not having enough clamps in the workshop. Otherwise, there is little point in the extra effort required to drawbore the joint, but not needing to clamp the piece makes it well worth the effort in certain cases where clamping is impractical...
Spring meets wedge?
You are god
You should glue in the dowel
I'm amazed that you can offset the hole by as much as 1/16 inc. I would think that the dowel would not want to go through that. The interwebz has some cross sections of draw bores: www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1436&bih=806&q=drawbore+cross+section&btnG=Search+by+image&oq=&gs_l=&gws_rd=ssl#gws_rd=ssl&imgrc=k6gP-VgqNyvyUM%3A
Square peg, round hole, tapered peg no offset required.
You mentioned that boring through all three pieces at once is not at all what a woodworker should do. Why not?
PiperCub49 because that does not result in the additional tension force of the draw bore. Drilling right through would give you a through-bore with zero clamping force.
PiperCub49 You wouldn't get the offset that allows dowel to pull the joint tight.
PiperCub49 It wouldn't draw the shoulders up and neither does the peg bend and create the tension you want. If you go to paulsellers.com you can see more on my blog on this issue there.
Paul Sellers Thanks everyone. That makes sense. Paul--I'll get to reading!
You should not bash your job with that hammer
Your work table is too messy
Or,,,clamp the joint slam hard for compression, drill, drop a screw in and plug the holes...
Using a brace??? Wtf!!!!