On Sun 22 May 2005 12:20:15p, gregg wrote in
news
I read an article in a recent issue of a woodworking magazine, about a
guy who does 16th/17th century woodworking with wet red oak.

His M&T's are loose fit an d done with drawbores. Zero glue. Evidently
his opinion is that if you drawbore the M&T, it doesn't matter how
tightly they fit and in fact he preferred them a little lose.

Yeah, I'd like to give that a try sometime.

For those of you who just joined in (and to make sure Saville and I are on
the same page), a drawbore is when you make a M&T joint and then you run a
dowel through it - except when you drill the hole you stop as soon as you
hit the tenon, take the tenon back out, and then drill the tenon hole about
a 16th or so back. Then you put the tenon back in, whittle the tip of the
dowel so it'll fit into the offset hole, and whack it in the rest of the
way so it pulls the tenon in, and the tenon now has a constant pull into
the mortise.

Am I correct? I heard there are also metal pins that are used to line up
the holes. Put in the drawbore pin, whack it till it's inside the hole,
then follow it with the dowel and when the pin falls out the other side
you're done. Sure seems to me that would be just fine without glue.

Of course, never having tried it, I probably don't know all the things that
could be done wrong. Like drilling the tenon hole too far back or too close
to one edge or something else I can't see till I've already screwed it up.

Dan