Bracket assembly methodoldogy

[throbscottle]

I'm making some shelf support brackets because I need 8 and the wood was free. Simple 3 pieces, upright goes against the wall, top piece has a little rebate cut so it looks better (due to curved edges), fits on top of the upright. Then there's the 45 degree piece that connects them. I decided to put 1 screw at the top, and a screw and a dowel at the bottom. I put one together (before sanding etc!) as a test piece. Nice and solid but, well the position of the dowel is a tiny bit off, which means my 45 degree ends are not flush (or rather, even more not flush than they would be anyway...)

I drilled the first dowel hole in the upright, then used one of those little button things to position its counterpart on the 45 deg piece, and then a dowel jig to get that straight - which worked fairly well. I think the position being off comes from screwing the other end in first to make it fit tightly, which then caused a problem using the little button thing.

So, I've got another 7 of these to assemble. What's a good approach to getting things lined up accurately?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bingy man]

I made some similar using 2x1 off cuts and had the same problem , in the end I abandoned the dowels and just used thin screws no 7 gauge and wood glue - the shelf it supports is a medium weight bearing but I’ve done a heavy duty Shelf using 2x2 using the same method as the metal h/ duty ones I used originally were deflecting with the weight of timber - no issues since..

 

[ChaiLatte]

So, I've got another 7 of these to assemble. What's a good approach to getting things lined up accurately?

Clamp it up and drill both pieces together from the back. Depth stop collar on the drill bit.

You could drill at 10 degrees out of square in both directions and 1/4" off centre in both directions and the dowel would still fit.

 

[throbscottle]

Well, that was interesting. After cleaning up and a lot of tweaking on the sander, the first one is square and looks fairly decent. But I realised that when the bottom screw is tightened, it pulls the angle piece in at the top and it lifts at the bottom. Maybe the end isn't flat, dunno.

So, I don't want to give up on the dowels - though your brackets look very good, Bingy man.

ChaiLatte, you hit on what was my "plan A" - but then I decided I didn't want to drill the backs all the way through. So maybe I'll go back to that. And glue them so they don't pull away!