seeking name of joint

Bill Simpson

Member
Messages
1,756
In all my years of schooling, teaching, shopping and now Internetting I have not run across the "Name" of this joint, although I have several antique chests and dressers with the drawers joined this way. All I have ever heard was "Drawer joint" or "Round peg joint"... Just bothersome that I like to have a name and some closure before my dimentia overwhelms my anal concerns.



Any of you brillant WWing Scolars have the answer, for I am discovering that I really don't know it all :eek: :D
 

Attachments

  • joint.JPG
    joint.JPG
    6 KB · Views: 23
thanks jason, i had seen them many times and hadnt seen a article on them..glad yu showed us what it was..is there any chance that they had variations of it.. i have got a piece of drawer that has lack of better terms got bears ear shaped sides that fit in like the knapp does but no pins like the knapp? dont meant to hyjack, mr Simpson but yu got your answer above and fast:)
 
I looked up the Knapp joint and found considerable info on it. Should have been easy to find but I was stumbling over my ignorance. thanks for leading me from the pit of dumbness.

Although I don't have a Knapp Dovetail machine from the Knapp dovetail company I would like to use that joint in a future piece, Looks like it would be a royal pain w/o the machine. but a reproduction could be nice.

I have often made drawer joints using a rabbit and dowels.

Thanks for enlightening my small brain


PS... whats with the MR stuff
 
I make my lovetails by hand, but they are a little different then what the link is showing, because the ones I make are done with the hearts facing right side up when you view them from the side of a drawer. You also have to plan the ones I make a bit as they can only work on a drawer one way due to the pulling effect.

The interesting thing is, I learned to make lovetails long before I could make dovetails. I am not sure which is easier to make though, both have their strong and weak points. The hardest part about making them is getting the layout right, and as you can see in the picture, I messed up on these as the hearts are not spaced perfectly in the height of the drawer. (my bad I know). Its tough because the perfect heart shape is 2/3 longer then it is wide, so the center of the heart is kind of deceiving to find when you got a row of them.

Here is a picture of some lovetails that I made on my daughters train-shaped cradle. I used the lovetails in the drawers underneath the locomotive cab. As a side note, it looks like the hearts are merely painted on, but what you are seeing is the end grain forming the hearts and they are darker because it sucked up the stain from being end grain wood. These are chiseled out of the solid wood that forms the front of the drawer. The sides of the drawer is a heart shaped socket. Glue keeps everything together, but as you can see the drawer has to be made this way, that way as you pull on the handle, the heart shaped pins pull against the sockets on the side boards of the drawer. If the hearts were the other way, you would only be relying on glue to keep them together.
 

Attachments

  • Lovetails.JPG
    Lovetails.JPG
    99.5 KB · Views: 28
Last edited:
Oh what the hay, I am on a roll here so I'll continue with my little theme here on unique dovetails. This was a hanging gun cabinet I made for a guy with the case put together via Pistoltails". That is the pins and sockets were made in the shape of pistols. The chiseling of the pins was time consuming, but it made for a unique joint holding everything together.

There was one point that should be made on this. In the interest of promoting gun safety, where a gun should never be pointed at anyone, I had to make two versions of the pistoltails...one facing right handed and one facing left handed. In that way when viewed from the sides, the pistolstails face the wall. If I used the same pattern, the ones on the right would face the wall, and the ones on the left would face the interior of the room. A small detail perhaps, but one I was compelled to do.
 

Attachments

  • Guntails-Small.jpg
    Guntails-Small.jpg
    83.1 KB · Views: 31
They where common in the late 1910 and thru the 20's on higher end furniture. I have several peices w/ that style joint. They are a type of dovetail joint.
 
Oh what the hay, I am on a roll here so I'll continue with my little theme here on unique dovetails. This was a hanging gun cabinet I made for a guy with the case put together via Pistoltails". That is the pins and sockets were made in the shape of pistols. The chiseling of the pins was time consuming, but it made for a unique joint holding everything together.

There was one point that should be made on this. In the interest of promoting gun safety, where a gun should never be pointed at anyone, I had to make two versions of the pistoltails...one facing right handed and one facing left handed. In that way when viewed from the sides, the pistolstails face the wall. If I used the same pattern, the ones on the right would face the wall, and the ones on the left would face the interior of the room. A small detail perhaps, but one I was compelled to do.


As you said Travis, those are really time consuming, but the result pays off IMHO. However the thickness of board needed for them makes me stay away from them at me moment.;):D
 
Yeah they are time consuming for sure, and takes careful chiseling work to get them right. They are also fragile. If you make the pin too big, they will blow the socket out because of the way the end grain is on the socket board.

As for thickness, it is not really an issue. A person could glue up an extra board on the ends to gain thickness and not have it affect the look of the piece at all. That was a common method used on starburst dovetails back in the day.
 
Top