How to make a box joint for furniture.
A requisite for this joinery method is absolute perfection in your cuts.
Both pieces of wood have to fit very tight together.
In fact so close together that you can not even get a piece of paper in between the parts.
This could still be achieved with a handsaw and chisel, but a box joint is hardly ever made by hand.
You will need a special tool to make a good box joint, there is no escape from that.
The box joint is similar to the dovetail method for furniture assembly.
It is slighly weaker then dovetails but nevertheless still a very strong method for joinery.
Box joints with a table saw.
We found an excellent description how to make a jig for box joints.
The instructions from popular woodworking are clear and well illustrated with pictures.
Another good woodworking example on the spruce also shows how to make a jig and how to use the wobble blade.
Start off with wood that is slightly bigger then you actually need.
The reason for that is, that the combination of the two parts tends to be slightly bigger than what you need.
This is a result of the minimal space between the joints gets multiplied by the amount of cuts.
This may add a couple of milimeters, resulting in a box or drawer that will not fit.
You will therfore have to measure again, once you have fitted both parts loose together.
That is when you will trim both pieces to their final size and finally glue the parts together.
Even though the previous mentioned instructions are great, there is nothing better than video to show those instructions.
See on the video below how to make a box joint with the table saw and a wobble blade.
Video instructions how to make a box joint.
More diy instructions for joinery with a finger joint.
The finger joint is another name for box joints.
However, not every fingerjoint is a boxjoint.
Another type for this joinery are dovetails, those are slightly more complicated to make.
- Box joints on instructables, a seven step instruction with pictures.
- About the finger joint on Wikipedia.
- Also very clear instructions for use of the wobble blade and a hand made jig, on woodmagazine.
- How to use a stackable dado set and box joint rig explained by instructables.