I’m planning on cutting some (or all, if time permits) joinery this weekend, so let me give you a quick preview of my plan. The vast majority of the carcass joinery is good old mortise-and-tenon. The picture below shows how I plan to lay out the joints. In this picture, you are looking down at a corner of the carcass. You can see the leg, a front rail, and a side rail depicted. Sorry for the poor quality of the picture; I had to sketch this out quickly on graph paper because I didn’t have time to model everything in Sketchup. If you need a frame of reference, you can see the final nightstand design here.
You can see from the picture that the tenons on the front and side rails are going to conflict with each other. I solved this problem by mitering the tenons together inside the leg. Also note that the tenons are not centered on the width of each rail. I pushed them off center a bit to increase their length. This should strengthen the joint by adding additional surface area for the glue.
The darkened area on the side rail’s tenon represents where I plan to place the dado in the leg to accept the side panel. I modified my original design a bit here; I pushed the side panels outward to give me the room I need inside the carcass to accommodate the drawers (more on this in a future post).
If I get the shop time I am planning on this weekend, I should have some step-by-step photos posted next week on cutting these joints.
To view the entire Nightstand Project series, please visit my project page.
Hmm, interesting. The setback seems to be greater than your original design. Did you modify the design, or is this detail drawing not to scale?
[...] 8, 2009 by Dave A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I made a joinery overview post that explained my strategy for the tenons on the top aprons. Each apron has a 1/2” wide by 1” [...]
[...] long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I made a joinery overview post that explained my strategy for the tenons on the top aprons. Each apron has a 1/2” wide by 1” [...]