Manual of Purpose-Made Woodworking Joinery

Edge joints 45

flat surface. Providing the rule is practised to always
keep one’s hands (and body- parts) behind cutting- edges,
both methods are safe, but the text- book method is
more suitable for inexperienced woodworkers. My
method of vertical- paring is quicker, but – because the
work is not in a vice and is being held onto the chop-
ping board with the palm- edge of one hand whilst
chiselling (at an angle) with the other – if not held
firmly enough, the work can tilt over whilst chiselling.
With reference to Figure 3.42(c), the ends of
shelves are usually housed- in to the shelf- unit’s cheeks
by one- third the cheek’s thickness – but the appear-
ance of housing grooves in the face- edges is tradition-
ally regarded as being amateurish, so they are stopped
away from the edge by an optional amount which
should not exceed the shelf ’s thickness. This results
in a small step having to be removed from the front
ends of the shelves. A typical housing- step is shown in
Figure 3.44(c), with its knife- marked, sawn shoulder
being vertically pared. Through housings and stopped
housings shown in Figures 3.42(a) to (d), can all be
cross- cut with a tenon saw – to a finish, or with an
allowance for paring to a more- precise finish – then
horizontally chisel- pared across the grain to within
a few millimetres of the gauge lines and finished off
with a Stanley- type Router No.71 hand plane, illus-
trated in Figure 3.44(d), with its extended cutter in a
grooved housing. Note that stopped housings formed

by hand, have to be partly formed with a sunken recess

at the stopped end to allow the toe of a tenon saw

to run freely when cutting the sides of the housing.

Once the width of stopped housings is pencil- or

knife- marked across the cheeks and the gauge marks

for the housing- depth and stopped- ends are done, the

sunken recesses are formed up to the face- side gauge

lines by boring shallow holes with a Forstner- type bit,

then squaring them up by chisel- paring (as shown in

Figure 3.44(e).

The dovetailed ends for the stopped dovetailed

housings shown in Figure 3.42(d) can be formed by

cutting the shallow shoulders with a gents’ saw or a

cutting gauge, then by using a long bevel- edged paring

chisel or a shoulder plane to form the sloping sides of

the dovetails.

If wishing to reduce some of the hand- skills’ work

on the housing- and halving- joints mentioned above,

the half- lap joints could be deeped on a band saw and

the housings could be trenched out with a portable

powered router.

EDGE JOINTS

Figures 3.45(a)(b)(c): Boards that are not wide

enough for a particular job have to be edge- jointed

and there are various ways of doing this. However,

before dealing with these, it must be understood that

the wider the board is in its original width, the more

likelihood there is of it being adversely affected by

shrinkage.

Depending on the equilibrium moisture- content of

the timber, there will be some shrinkage in width and

a lesser amount in thickness. Also, depending upon

90º

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 3.44 (a) Angled paring of a half- lap joint onto a
chopping board; (b) Vertical paring to sides of a housing;
(c) Vertical paring to recess of stopped housing; (d) Hand-
routered housing.

(e)

Figure 3.44 (e) Left- to- right sequence of 1) recessed

drilling of approx housing- depth; 2) Shallow holes chisel-

pared to form recess, then saw cuts made; 3) Waste

area chisel- chopped and routered to a finished stopped-

housing.

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 3.45 (a) Cupping (b) Diamonding (c) Quarter- or

rift- sawn board.