sin6i2024 Wood joint strength testing
Wood joint strength testing
Thad previously tested a mortise and tenon joint against a dowel joint for strength. In that test the
mortise and tenon joint won. But questions remained - how much stronger is one joint vs. the other,
and is it possible to improve on the dowel joint?
So | set out to do some more thorough experiments, this time using more samples and actually
measuring the breaking force of the joints,
Building the test stand
Ineeded some sort of sturdy test fixture that would allow me to slowly apply a measured amount of
force to the joint. At left, you can see the test stand | came up with. It consists of an L-shaped frame
that the joint under test is clamped to, a bathroom scale, and a hydraulic jack.
hitps:Moodgears.cajent_strongthy anasin6i2024 Wood joint strength testing
Like just about everything else, | made this test stand out of wood. With the frame made out of wood, |
had to make sure that it would be stronger than any joint | might try to break with it. Nevertheless, | still
used spruce, seeing that it's so much cheaper. | compensated for the softer wood by joining it with a
really massive triple tenon joint.
The triple tenon joint is about 6 cm deep. This meant that | couldn't use my screw advance box joint jig
to cut the tenons. | also couldn't use my quick-set tenon jig, because that jig doesn't move far enough
side to side. My crummy delta tenon jig has even less range of motion. So | ended up pulling out my
‘old tenon jig which | buill more than 10 years ago. This jig, placed on the right side of the saw had just
barely enough stroke to cut this massive joint with. The adjustment screw on it is a 10 turn per inch
acme screw. That came in handy for spacing the 1/2" wide tenons at exactly one per inch.
r
hitps:Moodgears.caljeint_ strength! 23ansr0a4 Wood ont strengt testng
I cut the triple mortises with an endmill in my horizontal boring machine. The endmill cuts deeper than
most router bits, but it works better at lower speeds. So | just used my horizontal boring machine as a
slot mortiser to cut the mortises, and then chiselled the ends of the mortises square. Each mortise is
4/2" (13 mm) wide, 6 cm deep, and 8 cm long. The pencil gives a bit of a sense of scale.
After gluing it together, | glued another piece to the backside of the joint
where it pushes together to give it an extra support.
[>= Grain oriented
perpendicular
trail
Making joints to test
I decided to standardize the
size of my joints to be a 6 x 1.7
cm rail attached to a post 3.5 x
3.5 cm in size. This is close to
the size of joint one might use
putting together a chair or a
Aepled force stool. It's that sort of joint that
gets stressed a Jot - so much
80 that most store-bought
wooden chairs will come apart at the joints eventually.
lused yellow carpenters glue for all of my tests. For the wood, | used spruce and then retested with
maple
My favourite is of course the mortise and tenon joint. | made all my tenons 3/8" (10 mm) thick, 27 mm
deep, and 55 mm wide.
hitps:Moodgears.caljeint_ strength! a3Wood joint strength testing
ansr0a4
I made a number of mortise and tenon joints, ranging from tight enough that I had to drive it in with a
hammer, to some being loose by a few thou, so that the dry fitted joint would stil have a tiny bit of play.
More about mortise and tenon joint fit and accuracy
I bought a bag of these pre-cut dowels, 2" long, and 3/8" in diameter (10 x 51 mm). They have ridges,
which | figure should help with gluing. They are also supposed to be pre-compressed, and re-expand
when glue is applied, for a better fit. | figured these dowels should really give the dowel joints a better
chance,
1 also went for three dowels, instead of two. The spacing of these dowels is at 3/4" (18 mm). | used my
horizontal boring machine, with its indexing function to exactly space my holes.
hitps:Moodgears.caljeint_ strength! anasin6i2024 Wood joint strength testing
In terms of strict wood joints joining a rail to a post, | couldn't think of anything else other than maybe to
use biscuit joints. But | don't have a biscuit jointer. Besides, if you cared about strength, you wouldn't
be using biscuit joint.
| also decided to test several types of screw joints. | rigged up an inclined plane on my horizontal
boring machine, which would allow me to mount the work piece at an angle for drilling pocket holes.
z
Here's one of my pocket hole joints. This one | fastened with 2" drywall screws.
| also tested a joint with the screws through the post and into the endgrain of the rail. | used three 3.6"
(80 mm) #8 wood screws, screwed through the post, and straight into the end grain of the spruce. |
drilled the pilot holes quite small, so that the thread could really bite into the wood. You can get away
with a lot with spruce, because it's quite resilient and doesn't split easily
hitps:Moodgears.caljeint_ strength! 513sin6i2024 Wood joint strength testing
Here are all of my test pieces in spruce. All cut from the same piece of 2x8 spruce lumber. | figured
that way, I'd reduce the effect of variations in the wood between different boards as a source of bias. |
was careful to select a board that had relatively consistent grain throughout
For economy, | always joined two rails onto one post, | always combined two different types of joint on
the same post, to reduce any bias that might come from one post being slightly better than another.
Spruce can vary quite a lot in weight and hardness, as | found out when doing some wood hardness
testing experiments earlier. | used a relatively heavy piece of spruce for these tests, simply because all
the stock on my lumber rack was of the heavy variety. | always select the heaviest boards when | buy
lumber.
Testing the joints
hitps:Moodgears.caljeint_ strength! enasin6i2024
‘Wood joint strength testing
It's easy to forget to note down the result, or miss the actual point where the force was maximum
before the joint lets go. So | set up a digital camera to take a video of my bathroom scale as | was
running the tests.
| also set up a lever, with some 1/2" metal shafts as pivots,
to cut the load on my bathroom scale by a factor of two in
case | needed to push harder than the 300 pounds that my
scale goes to, For the softwood joints though, it turned out
that none of the joints exceeded 300 pounds, so | just put
the jack directly on the scale.
| applied the force exactly 20 cm (8") from the post for
each test, so that the same load reading would result in
the same amount of torque at the joint.
| also adjusted the zero knob on my scale to compensate for the weight of the jack, so that it read zero
pounds with the jack standing on it. This saved me the trouble of having to subtract the weight of the
jack every time,
hitps:Moodgears.caljeint_ strength! m3Wood joint strength testing
I made three identical dowel joints. The dowel joint test samples failed at 120, 140, and 145 pounds. |
expected some variation, and was satisfied that these were all fairly close to each other.
| split apart the wood afterwards to inspect how the joint had failed. As expected, bits of the post
adhered to the dowels, so even though the joint failed along the glue line, it doesn't suggest that the
glue itself failed, All three joints failed with the dowels pulling out of the post, none with the dowels
pulled out of the rail. So this suggests that the long grain to long grain in the rail is slightly stronger
than the long grain to cross grain joint in the post.
hitps:Moodgears.cajent_strongthy62021 Wood ont strengt testng
I made quite a lot of mortise and tenon joints, which fit with different degrees of tightness. | split apart
some of these after testing them to inspect the result. As expected, bits of the post were stuck to the
tenon, so this again suggests that the glue itself was not the cause of failure.
The mortise and tenon joints failed at 170, 175, 140, 180, 185, and 190 pounds. There wasn't any
detectable difference between the loose, snug, and overly tight joints that | made. My conclusion is that
the fit, to the last few thousandth of an inch, is not that important to the actual strength of the joint, so
long as there is glue in the joint everywhere.
The mortise and tenon joints averaged 172 pounds, whereas the dowel joint averaged 135 pounds. So
the mortise and tenon joints stil beat out the dowel joints, but not by a dramatic margin. On average,
the mortise joints were only about 25% stronger.
Testing the screw joints
Next I tested the screw joints. Testing these was rather unsatisfying, because, in general, the joint
would just yield and yield. There was no explicit point of failure. The joint at left, for example, is still not
at its maximum amount of force. What happened is that the rail would just push itself into the post, and
the screw heads would pull into the wood on the other side. This
started happening at a force of just 85 pounds. As the screw heads
pulled further into the wood, force was still increasing. But the joint Ee &
was bent on the order of five degrees. From an aesthetic point of Wer ir) &
View, the joint was way past a point of unacceptable deflection,
hitps:Moodgears.caljeint_ strength! 93sin6i2024 Wood joint strength testing
experimented with reinforcing the screw heads with washers, which allowed me to increase the load
to 210 pounds before the screws finally pulled out of the end grain. | was really surprised how well the
screws held in the end grain of the rail. But I was still getting a lot of deflection in the joint as | tested.
Even these 5/8" (16 mm) washers got pulled into the wood, and the rail also compressed into the post.
The lesson from this is that the screw joints' strength were not limited by the screw thread's ability to
hold in the wood, even for end grain, The screw head without a washer just didn't provide enough
contact area against the wood compared to what a long screw thread could hold - even if ts in the
endgrain.
My pocket hole joints failed at just 115 and 110 pounds, with the 2" #7 screws pulling out of the post. |
unscrewed one of the rails, and screwed it against a maple rail and re-tested. This time, it went up to
140 pounds before it failed, with the rail splitting around the pocket holes. So 140 pounds is what |
would have achieved if | had used longer, larger screws. Again though, the amount of deflection was
past unacceptable well before the joint let go.
Retesting with maple
tested two dowel joints with maple. These failed at 230 and 245 pounds.
For the mortise and tenon joint in maple, | tested just two joints, which failed at 300 and 270 pounds.
Overall, the hardwood mortise and tenon and dowel joints showed
a minimal amount of deflection before failure, whereas the spruce
joints deflected a bit before the point of letting go.
lused 2" #8 screws for the pocket hole joint in maple. The joint
failed at 220 pounds, with the pocket holes splitting apart.
The joint with the 3 1/2" screws screwed through the post and into
the end grain held up to 160 pounds before the screw heads got
pulled into the post. After | put washers behind the screw heads, |
was able to load the joint to 300 pounds. At 300 pounds, the joint
hadn't failed’ yet, but it had deflected so far that | considered it
pointless to go any further. Even with the extra contact area
hitps:Moodgears.caljeint_ strength! ronri6r2021 ‘Wood joint strength testing
provided by the washers, the screw heads and washers were just pulling further and further into the
maple. The washers also got seriously bent out of shape.
The trouble with screw joints
Overall, all the screwed joints had an unacceptable amount of opening up of the joint before they
actually let go. From a furniture building perspective, having a joint open up by a few degrees is
unacceptable, so the ultimate strength where the screwed-together joint comes apart really isn't a
useful measure in terms of making furniture.
That said, the amount of yielding before failure of a screw joint does give it a certain amount of
toughness. Failure is gradual, and it takes a lot of energy to get a joint to let go. This means whatever
you fasten with screws takes a lot of beating before it fully comes apart. This property is useful if you
are building sawhorses, scaffolding, or packing crates. But for furniture making, it doesn’t help much.
So my conclusion is that for furniture applications where strength is critical, screw joints should be
avoided. That said, it's fine to use screws to attach a panel to the back of a dresser or bottom of a box,
but you shouldn't rely on screws to hold a chair frame together. if you do use screw joints, | think it's
best not to cover the heads, so that if the joint does open up alittle, you can at least re-tighten the
screws,
The main problem with screw joints with longer screws is that the screw
heads pull through the material, A typical countersink screw is quite bad for
this because the screw head forms a nice cone that is easier to push into
the wood. The flatter head of a drywall screw is probably better in this
regard. If you build something where the screw is hidden, it may be a good
idea to put a washer behind the screw head to give it a bit more contact
area with the wood.
The screws held surprisingly well in the end grain. | also experimented with
drilling a slightly larger hole for the screw, and filling the hole in the end
grain with glue before inserting the screw. This did improve the holding
power even more, yet the screw could still be unscrewed. So that may be
an effective technique to repair furniture where the screws have pulled out of the wood
Force of failure in pounds, applied at 20 cm
4 pound = 0.45 kg = 4.4 Newtons
Joint type ‘Spruce Maple
IMortise and tenon 170,175,140, 180, 185,190 300, 270
Dowel 120,140,145 230, 245
Pocket hole * 115,110,140 220
[End grain screw* 85 160
[End grain screw + washers *| 210 300
* All screw joints deflected to such a large extent before failure that the ultimate failure strength is
useless as far as furniture making is concerned.
For reference, | also tested the hardness of the wood | used, using my screwdriver drop hardness test
method. My spruce samples divoted by .115" on average, which made it slightly softer than many of
the spruce samples in my hardness table. All my spruce is selected for being heavy, so I'm pretty sure
hitps:Mwoodgears.caljoint_stengih! 3ri6r2021 ‘Wood joint strength testing
the spruce I was using was still slightly harder than the average piece. My hardwood samples tested
with divot depths of .035" to .043", which puts it in the middle of the range for the hardwoods.
Further observations
+ In my tests, mortise and tenon joints outperformed dowel joints by an average of 25%. This is
actually impressive performance for the dowel joints. The outside two dowels were only 47.6 mm.
apart at the furthest edges, whereas my tenons were 56 mm wide - nearly the width of the stock.
| couldn't put the dowels all the way out to the edge of the rail because they still needed wood
around them to glue into. The dowels also only protruded 25 mm into the post (half of the length
of the pre-cut 2" dowels), and the taper at the end of the dowels also shortened their effective
glue area by another millimeter or two. If | had restricted my tenons to the geometry I was forced
to with the dowels, I'm pretty sure they would have lost the advantage. That all said, the tenon
joints were faster to make and glue up.
+ In one of my spruce mortise and tenon joints, | had the growth rings parallel to the tenon. This
joint failed by the wood in the post shearing along the growth rings, and failed significantly sooner
than expected. So for strength it's probably best to orient the wood so that your tenons cross as
many growth rings as possible. | excluded this one sample from my results.
+ The first maple mortise and tenon joints that | tested failed much sooner than expected. On close
examination, | did not see the usual transfer of fibers from one part to the other. The glue, not the
wood had failed, Apparently, for that joint, 36 hours had not been enough to let the glue fully dry. |
excluded that sample and waited another 24 hours before testing the remaining hardwood joints.
+ The hardwood joints did not show any noticeable deflection or strain on the joint right up to the
Point of failure. Spruce showed more deflection. The screw joints all caused the joint to open up
to an unacceptable degree long before they actually let go.
+ Abig long screw holds surprisingly well in the wood’s end grain. | drilled the pilot holes quite
small, so all my rails were in danger of splitting when | put the screw in the end grain, However,
another quick test! did was to drill the hole larger, fill with glue, and then put the screw in. This
arrangement held very well, and the screw could still be unscrewed and re-screwed.
See also:
Examining the joint helf Doubl
surfaces tenons vs. screwed vs
pocket holes
hitps:Mwoodgears.caljoint_stengih! ranesin6i2024
‘Testing wood glue
strength
od
strength test
More about chairs and
ch y (2020)
Wood ont strengt testng
Mortise and tenon vs
dowel joints revisited
-
Testing different
methods of gluing
I
Testing drywall screws
Pocket hole strength
tests (vs. other joints)
Back to my Woodworking website
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