Unsure of the strength of short grain to long grain corner.

[BigTool]

Hello,

I am joining two pieces of wood together at the corners and am going to attempt a finger joint, but I'm wondering if I'm going about this the right way. Before I go on, below is a picture showing what I am talking about... The width of the upright is 5 cm, but due to the width of the fingers the thinnest part is only 1 cm (shown by the red lines), although finger joints are meant to be quite strong, could anybody suggest a better way of joining these, as one problem is that most of the surface area on this corner is long grain (from the crossbar) to short grain (the upright). All of the force will be downwards on the bolt holes of the crossbar, so there will be little force pulling the finger joint apart.

Even so, would anybody have a better suggestion of joining this securely?

Thank you for your help.

 

[Modernist]

You need the fingers to be along the grain, in the direction of the two red arrows. It will end up looking like a liquorice allsort, if that makes sense. You just need parallel slots and tenons, no right angled sections like you show.

This a mor complicated version with odd length shoulders to cope with the rebates but I hope it illustrates the idea.

 

[BigTool]

Hi Brian,

Wonderful - I see exactly what you mean. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

A.

 

[Modernist]

I'm from Newcastle!