what i learned: butt joints and screws are way stronger than people give credit for.

This is exactly the kind of information I needed, and really useful general education for all of us newbies getting into carpentry. Thanks for making this!

Honestly, who would dislike this video? Like what is your complaint? This guy has has gone out of his way to test joint strength very thoroughly and you dislike the video? Please explain.

@torysaccount5753

Ай бұрын

I agree, the thoroughness is outstanding. The biggest criticism however is using the screw as a contact point, because it buried itself in some woods way more than in others, throwing the results quite off. I think we need a remake with a better point of contact to draw any conclusions between the types of wood.

Interesting results! On the fulcrum, instead of a sharp screw that penetrates the wood, a small carriage bolt head might have been a better choice. Its rounded profile would concentrate the force to a small point as the screw point does, yet its smooth surface would allow the test piece to slide off as the angle changes. Allowing the point to grip the piece would, as you point out, change the results by changing the forces involved in breaking the joint.

@CurmudgeonExtraordinaire

4 жыл бұрын

Instead of a single point of contact, a line of contact would be better -- like what might be accomplished by attaching a round dowel or metal shaft across the lifting surface of the jig.

@TheShooter762

3 жыл бұрын

@@CurmudgeonExtraordinaire back when I did experiments (structural engineering) in college, we use a line like you are sayin, like a dowel inthis case

@kevingeorge6226

2 жыл бұрын

It's unfortunate, but the results are mostly invalid due to the screw used as a contact point in the test design. Other than that, it's an extremely valuable concept and would be good to see reliable results sometime.

@sierraecho884

6 ай бұрын

The screw test methodology threw the results way off, so did the not pre drilled hard wood which simply split, you can´t do that. It´s as If I were to test the structural integrity of a plastic piece and I heat it up to 400F° before I do my testing, all I test is not the plastic piece but the temp performance of the material, same here, splitting a piece of wood and then loading it does not make any sense.

Indeed, very interesting! I'm about to build some kitchen cabinets, and just wondered which method to use on either mdf or particle board. Honestly, as there will be no movement in the units, any of the results you have shown would be adequate to construct a box. What I do find the most interesting, is the fact that good old screws on a simple but joint with glue seems to be the best and, of course, the simplest solution. I am surprised that pocket screws are less effective, but secretly pleased as this will greatly simplify the task. Thank you very much for taking the time to conduct and share what must have been a very long and arduous test!

Haha, you nailed the project farm vibe. Even got his tone of voice and descriptions for each test down. Quality content with actual application. You did a respectable job.

@ancienttom97

3 жыл бұрын

This test is not very conclusive. It only evaluates how the joint will give way when a levered pressure is applied and is not indicative of the sheer strength that should be our interest for a lateral joint.

This was very helpful. I was contemplating getting a pocket screw jig, but your test shows that just using the 2" screws with butt joint will be just as good. Very handy.

This I right up my alley. Years ago,,,,im74. We used to always nail ,nail and glue, or as they say" screw it and glue it". Many years later I started making musical instruments. No place for metal fasteners in violins guitars and ukuleles. It amazed me how strong these instruments are using glue only. Also very narrow glue lines in most application.move along a few years and I decided to make a ply wood boat. Using epoxy glue I screwed and glued all the joints . After the glue set I removed all the screws and filled the holes with epoxy filler. It worked fine. Boat still solid and strong. Now I make a lot of furniture for my house for the sake of simplicity and past experience is use very few screws or metal fasteners. I sometimes use through Dowell's applied after the butt glued join dries . More often though I will just glue and clamp. A cross grain cleat or another component glued in place give plenty of strength. Chairs are the only items that really experience extreme trauma. Even chairs can be engineered for glue or Dowell. Or mortice and tenon joints. My point is that in most cases a bit of careful cross grain engineering,the odd Dowell etc combined with the amazing power of modern PVA like titebond and gorilla woodworking glue make nails and screw unnecessary My guest don't normally stand on tables or bring their pet elephant with them. I'm sure my furniture will last a lot longer than will Thank for the testing you did, it is very informative and provides a lot of food for thought. Geoff from Tasmania

Nice work, thanks ! I'm just an amateur DIY'er and what I saw was simple butt joints & 2" screws FTW. Which basically agrees with a similar video I recently watched. I don't need to deal with messy, time consuming glue. I don't need to spend extra time & money for biscuit joiners, pocket hole tools/screws & rabbit joints. And I can save some $$ with cheaper woods like MDF... and still have a relatively strong joint. I wonder how mitre joints with screws would have done. But since I don't have any circular / mitre saws, it doesn't really matter to me.

I have seen 2 or 3 millions of vids with this topic. This is the best by far. I'm going to share it. Thanks for your work, for sure it's been a long work.

I give you a lot of credit for this effort which begs another question regarding the strengths of dowels, and mortise and tenon....but that we'll save for another day. That's aboooot it....best wishes from sunny Kauai!

@nca4794

2 жыл бұрын

I'd love to see that test!

This is superb content! Very insightful that the 2 screws + glue seem stronger than pocket screws + glue. Pocket screws seem to be getting all the recommendations and hype but can be a pain to use, and your video proves how sometimes they are unnecessary.

@zhugeliang777

Жыл бұрын

indeed

Great vid, I can really see the Project Farm influence. What type of glue did you use? and did you follow the manufacturer's recommended "dry time?".. its shocking glue plus nails did not do far better than just nails. Also curious why you choose to use the screw as your contact point.

I work in quality assurance in a mill (we make I beams and lvl) and these tests really show results well I think. It all depends on grain structure of the wood as well. Some of the tests you can see failed due to the laps in plywood and or knots near the joints. Just a few of the variables I saw. Good testing rig though. It's very enjoyable to watch and a very different type of content from normal.

Great video. You got results like I would have expected with a few exceptions. Good job! Your intro immediately made me flash on Project Farm!

The I Build It steel dovetails for the win! Nice practical test, Brad.

Hey! I did see Project Farm for 1/2 a second. You did help me decide on the miter joint for my next set of speaker boxes.

Amazing and helpful video. Right to the point i love the pace, no wasting time watching you put all that together. Thanks for all that hard work!!

Dude got total Project Farm vibe there, even the mannerisms.

@DIYBuilds

2 жыл бұрын

That was the joke lol 😆

We ought to repeat this experiment to get a better understanding of variability per joint, per material. Should be crowdsourced so no one person has to make thousands of these joints xD. People practice making joints anyway so might as well measure em! I think the flaw in this test setup is as you’d pointed out: the screw embeds itself in the material. IMO, this means it’s not measuring load until embedment stops, until then you’re measuring how well materials resist puncture. This can be improved by mounting a metal plate before pushing the screw against it. This eliminates any embedment and you’d measure pure point-source loading. Other variables to consider: Load distribution and where load is applied. We probably want to pick the worst case of each to get a most conservative estimate of failure (i.e., we can expect better performance in real-world application).

This was fascinating! Well done. I’d love to see a part 2 with dovetails, box joints and any other type of joint you can create. Thoroughly enjoyed this one - Bravo!

@whomadethatsaltysoup

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, that would love to see a similar test on more traditional joints!

Nicely done. Thanks for the effort and material put into your finding. Very interesting...

"Very impressive score!" i loled

Thank you so much!! I was torn on what joinery to use when making my outdoor grill and this helped me a lot!

Well this held my undivided attention better than netflix. Very practical info.

Project Farm and Matthias would be proud!

Very comprehensive and helpful. Nice to see something that has real world practicality. Guess repeating it without the sharp screw and doing 3 of each sample would be great but I can see why you don't fancy it.

I think the mitre joint is strong because the load is distributed across a larger surface area. It makes sense to me; kinda like why you don’t sink when on skiis in snow.

WOW, incredible video! Clear, to the point, concise, and TONS of info in a short space without all the junk-fill that other youtubers cram in! I'm subscribing!

@Nifty-Stuff

3 жыл бұрын

Seriously, this is orders-of-magnitude better than other "comparison" videos! Only suggestion: Do a follow-up adding dowel joinery!

As a newbie this the most informative video to me, thanks alot man, looking forward to see video of remaining wood joining methods like dowels, Mortis and tenant joints & much more, thanks again ❤️

Did you use hardwood pocket hole screws on the hard maple?

@DIYBuilds

4 жыл бұрын

Never heard of that so no lol.

@danielszemborski

4 жыл бұрын

@@DIYBuilds If you look at the blue, Kreg covers of the pocket hole screws, it will state in blue letters "Hardwood" or red letters "softwood." The hardwood screws have much finer threads. Maybe that is why your hard maple was cracking.

Thanks for the great test!

Fascinating. I learned a lot about the cheaper materials and how to apply it to what I want to achieve. I was hoping to see a test where the ends had the boards routed with a thin finger joint so they fit into one another, glued. I bet that would be a very strong corner joint. Thanks for taking the time to go through all these and post your results!

Very helpful - I always struggled to pick joinery thats bests suit the application. Thanks for the video.

you just saved me a TON of work and some $$$ thank you subcribed just after watching this vid (added bonus, SUPERB and i mean superb video quality even at 720p, and thank you for the clear sound) cant say enough

Awesome video! Even after cutting your thumb the work continued - much appreciated. Looking forward to version 2 in the years to come

Lots of works, thanks for doing it. I’m not sure I agree with the conclusion that if the test piece bends past the screw’s length the joint fails. But, I will surmise we got our answers anyway and appreciate the work you put into this experiment.

@DIYBuilds

Жыл бұрын

I revisited this video idea with a better test setup and even more joint types a few months back if you want to watch that.

Been waiting to see this for a long time. "Are you ready ??? Are you ready ??? LETS GET IT ON!!! "

Very good information! Thank you so much.

Thank you for conducting the test. It gave a beginner a good starting point to consider when starting and planning out a project. Have a good one

Fully packed with precious info, thank you.

I love your project farm's reference

very interesting!!!

My confusion relating to the wood joints just came to an end. The useful one indeed.

Thank you sir! This is exactly what I needed to see.

Very useful. Thanks!

Thank you

Excellent. Thanks for going through all of that. Looks like pocket holes are just fine for most applications.

Thanks for doing this, answered a lot of questions about quick joinery I’ve had.

The question is: When did your finger fail?

@DIYBuilds

4 жыл бұрын

The very first test i smacked it against the holding jig lol.

@yobryan88

3 жыл бұрын

@@DIYBuilds 😆😅

Dude, I love this simple approach to test these with everyday thing we all have, Great job. I think you should loose the screw and do them all at the same distance from the joint.

Cool data , thanks for taking time out, and putting it together very helpful adding to the toolbox of knowledge

Liked and subscribed! Excellent test covering so many types of joints and woods.

Amazing. Thank you so much

Thanks! I was going to build a subwoofer box and was planning on buying a pocket hole jig, not any more, looks like the regular old butt joint with screws is the way to go. -Cheers

Thanks. Well done. I wonder where dowel joints would stand.

I saw the reference of project farm on the first 2 seconds of the video! Amazing. He could've record the intro for you...

this was an awesome test. Thanks for putting in so much time.

This is a great video! Thank you!

Very well done! Thanks for this valuable information!!

Very good tests.

thanks a lot for the information!

That is truly taking one for the team! Thank you sir!

You should use a blunt impact point for reliable pressure testing. As the screw that pushes the pieces of wood and ply can go into them and hence give exaggerated or diminished results depending on whether the surface it is hitting is soft or hard. As you must have noticed at many instances the laminated MDF surface gave more resistance to penetrations and hence was pushed off more easily.

You went to such a great effort to give this video to us, I really appreciate that. Liked and subscribed, Thankyou for your hard work.

Thank you for sharing this 😊

Finally some educational video after thousen useless videos on youtube. Congrats, man! And thank you for trying all that stuff for us!

This experiment brings interesting results. One I noticed is that every material has its best joint. Surprisingly the miter joint + glue in the pine is cheap and amazing, winning many joints in hard maple.

@marekmarek7914

Жыл бұрын

How to make miter joint?

ok i will stick with my 2" nail+ 2" screw+ glue. i have been thinking all this time, does my joint strong enough?, thank you.

Awesome! Thanks for doing this and sharing!

Hola, Muchas gracias por este video.No he visto a nadie hasta ahora hacer este tipo de prueba tan importante en la carpintería.Muchas gracias por compartir sus conocimientos.Disculpe mis ingles pues soy cubano. Hello, Thank you very much for this video. I have not seen anyone so far do this kind of important test in carpentry. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. Excuse my English because I am Cuban.

Fascinating results . Thanks a lot for being this up

This is the best joinery comparison video I've seen. Love it if you could pickup where this left off and make a part 2 comparing dowels and 45 degree dowel joinery.

I love you for doing this! I'm making rolling shelves for animal cages, and this is going to help me make everything safe and sturdy!

I quality test rolled aluminum 50 hrs a week and this is a very underrated video. Thanks for testing, think I’ll stick with mitered pine.

Thank you for all these comparisons!

Thank you for taking the effort to do this... very useful for a DIYer :)

Thanks for this video... This video is very useful for me🙏

Thank you for the video. Two things. First, I would like to see someone compare a single Domino strength to simply using two 5 cent Lamello Biscuits on top of one another. No one has done that. Even a clone Domino is 17 cents. Second, I used calipers and measured the thickness of 30 each of DeWalt and Swiss-made Lamello plate joiner Biscuits. Lamello was 1000 for $46.37 from Amazon, which is 4.6 cents each. DeWalt was $7.98 for 100 from Lowes, which is 8 cents each. I calculated the mean and standard deviation of the thicknesses and the Lamello were more than 3x as uniform. 97.7% of Lamello are predicted to be between 3.69 and 4.00mm. DeWalt are 3.34 to 4.31mm. The goal is to be as close to 4mm without going over. Visually, the Lamello have a glue-gripping pattern on each side. The DeWalt had a more shallow grid on one side. No sense in judging biscuits without using Lamello brand.

@DIYBuilds

2 жыл бұрын

I would be glad to. Send me the tools and supplies and I will make it happen.

Awsome job mate exactly what i was looking for, earned yourself a viewer and subscriber!

Great timing, son wants to build a shelf and this will help him decide which method to use May want to put an asterisk on the pine miter joint result as that looks to be an anomaly as Stephan and others pointed out. Thank you very much for doing this. This must have taken you hours and hours to complete, never mind the editing!

The video shows that simple screws outperform pocket holes for a butt joint. I see so many people on youtube using pocket holes in cases where a simpler and stronger approach is right in front of them... and it doesn't require purchasing a blue plastic jig. (Of course pocket holes are good for superficial facing pieces)

@ian9toes

2 жыл бұрын

I do believe in some situations a pocket hole jig is easier. It certainly was when I added a shelf to a fixed cabinet where I didn’t have access to screw from the outside of the cabinet.

Well done!

I've seen many versions of wood joint testing & your's is one of the best! Nicely done & the results speak for themselves. One thing that I am curious about is why you used a screw through the wood for the testing? Why not just use an elevated flat piece of metal that would put even pressure across the entire piece being tested? Just curious.................. Thanks for posting 👍👍

@DIYBuilds

4 жыл бұрын

Because i was lazy and didn't think it would imbed itself in the wood as much as it did. I would have done thay for sure had i known.

This is exactly the video I was looking for, thanks!!

I think this is more insight-dense than 99% of peer-reviewed papers I've read. Fantastic!

Fantastic video, thank you for putting together. I would point out, like many others, that the screw as the touch point would distort the joint measurement by skewing based on the softness of the wood. It would have been better to simply have a block and then there would be little to no variance based on the pressure point. Also would have been good to have a contact block above that would then measure the failure point exactly every time. But again, awesome video and tons of work involved. Thanks!

thank you !

Great video!

I appreciate the effort you put into this.

Thanks so much! Great info!

What an outstanding, well done video! To me, the results give me the main thing I was looking for - if aesthetics aren’t super important (MDF or plywood), glue+screws gives the strongest joint - but where aesthetics are important (solid woods and maybe melamine and Baltic birch ply), glue+pocket hole screws should be plenty strong. Good to know that a glued miter joint is just as strong for melamine as glue+pocket hole screws. Per all the comments below, I’d love to see a follow-up video with additional joints included (dowels, mortise-n-tenon, box joint, dovetails, and splines) - with a better contact point than the screw so it doesn’t dig into the wood and compromise the results. While the results you posted are probably good enough to tell most of us what we need to know, it’d be nice to see a second set of data with the problems/omissions addressed.

thanks

Brilliant vid! Straight to the point, no bull 😊

Thanks a lot for doing this. It answered many questions.

Nice job!

Very nice. Would love to see one with more consideration of dowel joinery, domino, and mortise and tenons. Currently this only looks at edge to end grain - I bet edge to edge would also yield different results, too.

Thanks for all the work, how many hours did go into this project? On to the dovetails and other joins!

@DIYBuilds

4 жыл бұрын

Too many lol

Reading some of the comments I think some people fail to see the convenience of some of the methods. Pocket hole screws for example only require using a spacer from the inside of a cabinet for a shelf which is much easier than screwing from the outside of a cabinet while holding the shelf at the same time. The test method tested joints in a way they aren’t subjected to in reality. I reckon for 95% of applications most of those joints would be fine. The main thing for me is what is convenient. Another thing is the rabbet joint looked poor here but in a cabinet with a rabbet either side for a shelf it would be the strongest joint.

Fantastic.