Brian Dokko Online

Since I was a kid with buckets and buckets of Legos, I have always liked working with my hands and building (or destroying) things.  Tools, too, I've always been fascinated with.  They make jobs easier; some jobs are impractical without them.  Inspired by a friend's habit/hobby/livelihood of woodworking and carpentry, I decided get into woodworking joinery.

We've all put together a piece (or several pieces) of furniture from Ikea, and I think most of us recognize those small wooden dowels and hex-keyed screws Ikea uses to secure pieces of wood together.  That's fine for what it is, but it's awesome to see furniture secured together without screws or nails, held together only with dovetail joints or mortise and tenon joints (and maybe some glue).

With that, I bought some Marples chisels, a Veritas dovetail saw and marking gauge, and a few pieces of pine and maple.  Here's one of my first mortise and tenon joints:

It's fascinating to see how the simplest structures are sometimes the most stable.  A mortise and tenon is an example of this.  It's basically one piece of wood shaped to fit into the hollow of another (see below figure, stolen from Wikipedia).  The tenon fits into the mortise, which is cut out with a chisel and hammer (or powered machine, like a mortiser).  It's been used for thousands of years, and when done properly, serves both functionally and aesthetically ("look ma, no nails!").