Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
Old thread! I posted on 2014;
"The most common (90%?) furniture failure brought in for repair is a failed dowel joint.
M&Ts are belt and braces - glue and wedges and/or pegs. Dowels are glue only, with a small glued surface area- basically an inherently weak joint."
The most common failure is chair back to seat joint.
Often found in cheap machine made furniture but never used in trad joinery as a joint except for holding unstressed items (decorative bits etc), because they make a weak joint.
On the other hand they are/were widely used to pin through a M&T joint, sometimes draw-bored, where they are effective.
Would be stronger as a joint if made bigger i.e. with more glued surface area. The famous Reitveld red & blue chair has fat 16mm dia dowels, which seem to work OK.
If you must use them they must be well filled with glue. A 1mm weep hole for blind holes helps, and is invisible once the glue has gone off.
"The most common (90%?) furniture failure brought in for repair is a failed dowel joint.
M&Ts are belt and braces - glue and wedges and/or pegs. Dowels are glue only, with a small glued surface area- basically an inherently weak joint."
The most common failure is chair back to seat joint.
Often found in cheap machine made furniture but never used in trad joinery as a joint except for holding unstressed items (decorative bits etc), because they make a weak joint.
On the other hand they are/were widely used to pin through a M&T joint, sometimes draw-bored, where they are effective.
Would be stronger as a joint if made bigger i.e. with more glued surface area. The famous Reitveld red & blue chair has fat 16mm dia dowels, which seem to work OK.
If you must use them they must be well filled with glue. A 1mm weep hole for blind holes helps, and is invisible once the glue has gone off.