Whenever you are designing a wood product, one of the most important decisions that you will make is what type of joint or joints to use in your design. Its rare anymore for me to use a butt joint on anything. When I am designing something, I generally want my pieces to interlock with one another. This interlocking creates a super strong assembly, especially as an assembly relates to a large piece such as an armoire. Racking of large scale cabinets is not uncommon and there aren't a whole lot of options available to choose from to keep this racking to a minimum. There are two that I can think of. The first one is to X brace the sides together along the back surface. X bracing involves nothing more than locking two pieces of wood together in the shape of an X. Where the two pieces overlap, generally that joint is a half-lap. The assembled X is then nailed or screw to the sub assembly (in this case, an armoire). X bracing though is very ugly and the X brace takes up valuable storage room for the interior of the piece. A much better way of minimizing racking of a piece is to use dados and half dados so that when the pieces are joined together you have an interlocking assembly.

Below are some examples of wood joints that I modeled up on AutoCAD. Keep in mind that in most cases, several joints could be used. There is no one right joint for every application.

Mission Statement

Michael's design was created to educate consumers about the factors which should be considered in any design, to provide design ideas, computer aided design files, renderings, and other information related to the design of cabinets, furniture, mechanical products, millwork, and residential and commercial buildings. 

Send mail to CadSpecialist@neo.rr.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 1988 through 2003 by Michael's Design
Last modified: 02/24/03