Drawboring in softwood

[Eric The Viking]

Thre or four years ago, I made a stand for the DC's tomato growbags, out of scrap wood - four bits of of old fencepost for the corners, 3x2 for the rails and old floorboard for slats. There's a shelf underneath for flowerpots and the whole is intended to keep the slugs at bay, which it does pretty well.

The rails were too long for any clamps I have, so drawbored with 8mm ramin dowel (×2 per tenon), offset by about 1/8". It worked pretty well. The joints were glued with Titebond 2, but I dowelled the shorter rails at the ends, too, partly to match but also because I was expecting the weather to get at the glue sooner or later.

If anything, the offset was too small. I used the straightest grain I could see in the length of dowel - nothing riven as such. The joints take decent weight, but not force to spring them.

HTH,

E.

 

[Jacob]

But not tapered Jacob - Bit like pellets, tapered ones are better cause you're guaranteed a nice snug fit.

Coley

Yes - point the ends with an axe, block plane or whatever, but you wouldn't need to taper the whole thing. You'd have to drill a tapered hole to match!

 

[ColeyS1]

But by using a tapered drawbore you but a bit of compression on the holes from the start- hopefully if the drawbore shrunk it would be hammered in enough that the shrinkage would be minimal cause you've already compressed the wood (to some extent) around it.
Must say the majority of my drawbore use, is for joints that don't get glued, or can't be. Stairs, greenoak frames etc. For joints that can be glued I guess being tapered or not is irrelevant so longs the glues gone off........... but if the glue fails, the dowel shrinks, the joint opens water gets in followed by rot and complete sadness, or you have an unsightly gap [SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH]
Horses for courses

Coley