Joint choice - advice appreciated

[DrD]

Afternoon all,

I'm making a very small shed (60 x 60 cm footprint), part of which requires a timber frame. I'm only using hand tools (due to a lack of power tools) and I don't have a pocket hole jig.

As such, I need to join three pieces of timber together at right angles to one another, as per the pic. In the pic, the blue piece is the corner upright with the leg, whilst the red and yellow pieces are the bottom front/side rails respectively.

If it was just one joint I'd be fine, however I'm a little stuck. Thinking of a combination of lap joint and mortice and tenon, or perhaps two half sized tenons?

Any suggestions?

Cheers

 

[RobinBHM]

I guess you cant make the shed with separate frames, ie with 2 of the blue jambs, then screw those together?

Or if as your drawing, then maybe tenon one and screw through for the other joint?

Are the rails taking any downward force. ie like supporting the floor?

 

[Wuffles]

If they're not supporting any weight particularly, I would imagine any one of my wood butcher friends would nail gun that in place from varying angles, but you also have the luxury of coming at it from the flat face of the upright. Screws would probably be better, but too slow for my wood butcher friends.

If they are supporting the floor, ignore most of what I wrote above. I do have wood butcher friends though, so that bit's still valid.

 

[DrD]

Thanks, they are supporting the floor.

I'd prefer to avoid screwing/nailing in to end grain as the sole form of support :wink: .

 

[Wuffles]

Screw blocks into the upright underneath them to also form support would be a goer in my mind. My mind is a terrible place though.

 

[Bm101]

60x60 cm? :shock:

 

[DrD]

60x60 cm? :shock:

Yeah.... It's apparently called a sentry shed. Wife saw one in a garden centre, I refused to pay £250 for it and here we are...

Hers will be different, but the idea is the same.

 

[Bm101]

I can see the appeal actually. Handy for the spade and so on, easy to keep tidy because you can't really overfill it. I might just steal your idea, will keep the Mrs and her best mate OCD (obsessive cleaning disorder) out of my shed too.
Plus, if the garden floods with all this rain you can use it as a canoe!

 

[graduate_owner]

My solution, as someone else has said, would be to screw wood blocks to the uprights and let the horizontals rest on them. The horizontals can then be screwed to the blocks, plus skew nailed or whatever to the verticals. I'm no great joint maker so that would be an easy fix for me.

K

 

[Racers]

I can't help thinking you are over thinking this, sheds are just usually a base with the sides screwed on, the cladding overlaps the base and hides it.
the sides are just frames clad with tongue and grove etc, but I don't see why you couldn't use ply with shallow groves cut in to mimic T&G.
That's the way they have always been built no point engineering a timber frame like a barn just for a shed.
Have a look in B&Q and see just how flimsy they are constructed, anything you make will be far stronger.

Pete

 

[Roughcut]

I would make it as 4 stud frames screwed together, complex joints are not required in my opinion.
And would add bearers to support the floor if needed.

 

[MattRoberts]

It's not a massive structure. I'd make one joint as a mortise & tenon, let the glue dry and then make the second straight through the first

 

[Bm101]

It's not a massive structure. I'd make one joint as a mortise & tenon, let the glue dry and then make the second straight through the first

Blah blah blah.
It's not that your view is not valid or correct Matt, I'm just easing you into having a daughter lol.

 

[MattRoberts]

It's not a massive structure. I'd make one joint as a mortise & tenon, let the glue dry and then make the second straight through the first

Blah blah blah.
It's not that your view is not valid or correct Matt, I'm just easing you into having a daughter lol.

Haha!

 

[Armagh]

I'm no expert, but is a mortised corner joint not basically what you are after? If you google 'mortised corner joint' and look at the images that is what you're after. Maybe that is a bit more work than you fancy?

 

[Benchwayze]

Thanks, they are supporting the floor.

I'd prefer to avoid screwing/nailing in to end grain as the sole form of support :wink: .

Buy or borrow the larger version Kreg Pocket-Hole Jig. The screws would go into the upright, at an angle through side grain. Just as if they had been nail-gunned. You can stagger the screws when you drill the pockets.

HTH

 

[DrD]

Thanks for the responses all, very much appreciated even if I am a little slow getting back to you.

I know this isn't how sheds are normally built, I hack wood for fun rather than money so don't mind it taking longer. I want the frame to be external with the gaps filled with T+G boards. Similar to this:

I had a quick play about with some scraps of timber and come up with a joint I am mostly happy with. Essentially two mortices with shouldered tenons, so they don't interfere with one another. Only half of each tenon protrudes through the opposite face of the long timber.

Will this have removed too much material from the longest timber?

(Please excuse the sloppiness, was just a quick check. I will shift the tenon to the centre on the top piece, I cut the mortice central when in retrospect I should have cut it further over.)

 

[Arron]

Notice and tenon both rails then mitre the tenons so they form corner inside the mortice....or am I talking rubbish???

 

[MattRoberts]

Will this have removed too much material from the longest timber?

(Please excuse the sloppiness, was just a quick check. I will shift the tenon to the centre on the top piece, I cut the mortice central when in retrospect I should have cut it further over.)

So what you've created there are effectively haunched tenons, which is widely used for corner joins - nice one

You could inset them on all sides though so that you have cheeks all round (and a neater joint).

 

[skipdiver]

If i were making that, there wouldn't be a wood joint in site. It's a shed, so it would be hammer and nails all the way. Or nail gun as Wuffles says, but then i am one of those woodbutchers to which he refers.