Performance of Dowel-Welded T-Joints for Wood Furniture

Abstract

Comparison of two types of furniture joints namely step butt T-joints and mortise and tennon T-joints held together either by one or two welded or glued dowels showed that the shear strength results of welded dowel and glued dowel joints were comparable. For mortise and tennon T-joints there is, in general, no difference if the dowel is inserted at a 45° or 90° angle. Also there is no significant difference between welded and glued dowel joints stiffness values in both step butt and mortise and tennon T-joints of the same geometry. Also, there is no significant difference between dowels inserted at 45° or 90° for mortise and tennon T-joints. Glued dowel and welded dowel step butt T-joints behave quite differently from linear joints. Thus, in step butt T-joints a higher shear strength is obtained if a single dowel is inserted at 45° for both glued and welded dowels. Both shear strength and stiffness increase as the number of dowels increases, namely from one to two. The application of the welded joint technique to joints where the number of dowels is limited by the limited space in which they can be inserted, such as in furniture, can give shear strength results comparable to those obtained by gluing the same dowels. This is particularly the case for mortise and tennon T-joints.