Chris Friesen wrote:
FoggyTown wrote:

In a project where screws would normally (and acceptably) be used to
attach one piece of wood to another, is there anything lost (i.e. in
strength or structural integrity) in using glued dowels instead of
screws?

It's certainly possible. Screws are metal, and have higher strength/size.

It's possible to invent scenarios where screws would hold better than
dowels, because dowels of sufficient strength would not actually fit in
the space required.

That, of course, is the precise reason Maloof uses screws many places he
does...

Given the tensile strength of steel, it would take a very large dowel to
exceed it from a purely mechanical viewpoint. The screw will almost
invariably pull from the wood by the wood failing long before the screw
itself will fail.

That said, in most situations well-fitted long-to-long grain glue joints
will be nearly as strong as the wood itself. Dowels can be used to
increase glue area or for alignment. In most cases, it's the extra area
that adds strength over the joint without them when there is added
strength or they add the cross grain breaking resistance where otherwise
there might only be a _relatively_ narrow long grain which could break
along the grain (and not necessarily or even likely at the glue joint
itself).

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