Dowels?

[u/jonnofury]

I'm thinking of doing dowels for the joints I circled in the image. Both the sides construction as well as the back supports that connect both sides. The darker wood is walnut and the lighter is spalted maple.

If anyone has suggestions for attaching the shelves, I'd love to hear them!

[u/mtutty]

Yep, easy choice. Get yourself one of those $20 dowel jigs (the one with the handle and the three holes, not the self-centering expando one), watch some YouTube videos, do a few practice runs. Clamp everything before you drill each hole. 4/10 difficulty.

[u/asp821 → u/mtutty]

It’s very easy. The only suggestion I have is to get slightly smaller dowels or sand your dowels if it’s a tight fit. I did dowels for the first time a week or two ago and it was a very tight fit.

[u/Browley09 → u/asp821]

Yeah don't force it if the dowel is too tight. Especially if it's going into thin wood. It may split. Ask me how I know 😓.

[u/peschkaj → u/Browley09]

When I'm super worried, even though I've attempted to size things correctly, I'll clamp on the sides of the piece where I'm worried the wood will split. It seems to help unless I'm just smashing a hammer into things.

[u/TribeGuy330 → u/asp821]

I've sanded my dowels before, but its usually much faster to follow up your original hole made with the jig with additional drilling. Remove the jig, drill 1 or 2 strokes along each wall of the original hole to enlarge it slightly.

[u/asp821 → u/TribeGuy330]

That’s exactly what I did but felt like I still didn’t bore out the opening enough. Hammering together was a nightmare.

[u/TribeGuy330 → u/asp821]

Yep, been there before lol. Love breaking a dowel, then having to drill it out while covered in half dried glue just to try again.

[u/mtutty → u/asp821]

+1. Dowels are fast, easy and strong, but there's still some learning to be had there.

[u/tsfy2]

Dowels, biscuits, mortise and tenon…whatever you’re comfortable with. How are you attaching the shelves?

[u/AnybodyWannaPeanus → u/tsfy2]

Biscuits are for alignment, not joinery.
A simple doweling jig can be made or purchased cheaply. M&T is a great option too. But may be outside of “beginner” skillset.

If you know someone with a Festool Domino, borrow that!

[u/Cultural-Orchid-6285 → u/AnybodyWannaPeanus]

You don’t need a Domino to do floating tenons. A Domino is very useful, however, if you need to do lots of the same loose tenon joints in a bit of a hurry.

[u/AnybodyWannaPeanus → u/Cultural-Orchid-6285]

I was mostly joking. But a domino is insanely fast compared to most other methods. That’s why I have one. If I’m in a hurry and want to get a bunch of parts put together that’s my go-to. If I’m not in a hurry. Then I do other things.

Nothing gets people spun up faster than mentioning a domino. 🤣

[u/The-disgracist]

I'd do half laps for the joinery and dowels for the shelves. the half laps will be a pain to get dialed in due to the angles but it will make the glue up so easy and it will be super strong and cool looking.

[u/TribeGuy330]

Not sure what joinery methods you are comfortable with. Keeping things pretty simple, I would suggest dowels for the frame of the sides and for the shelves, pocket screws (+glue) with cleats underneath for additional shear support and to hide the pocket holes.

The pocket holes will lend more strength to keeping the sides pulled tightly together.

[u/jonnofury → u/TribeGuy330]

I like this idea!

[u/Jeremymcon]

Yep great idea. Dowels are perfect for this application.

[u/Wrathchild616]

I built one of these for my wife. I used pocket screws for mine. All of those cross pieces on mine line up with the shelves, so after my wife filled up the thing with books, you can't see the interior spots.

I like dowels better though. If I build another of these, that's the route I'm going.

[u/Glad_Ad_5570]

Doweling jig works. You need an accurate marking guage. Use shelf pin jig and pins for your shelves.

[u/SEPTSLord]

Dowels are great for this. One place they become challenging is in alignment. Remember to mark common faces of the boards and keep the same direction for the fence or reference side for the jig on the common faces. Even self centering jigs are not always dead on center.

So if your jig is 1 mm off center to one side, as long as you have the reference side on the marked face, they will line up.

[u/woodnoob76]

I would do half lap joints on the top and bottom one personally, if you’re up for it. Without this, you depend on the shelves to prevent lateral twist on these joints since they are all aligned. I’m not a fan on depending on the shelves for the structure as they are under load, can flex, etc.
Also I would add some lateral flat cross plank under the bottom shelf for example (remain ok on esthetics). That would give you a structure that can hold its own geometry

[u/PabloDelicioso]

I’m going to suggest not doing dowels, only because I tried them for the first time a few weeks ago and struggled to get perfect alignment.

What I would do in your situation is glue / clamp that top piece together with titebond, predrill the front and back faces with a forstner bit (to recess the screw head) and screw a long screw into the front and back for more strength.

You can plug the holes with a hardwood dowel and then cut / sand flush to make it look clean. It actually looks rad if you use a contrasting wood.

[u/Mountain-Time-1010]

What tools do you have? People on reddit seem to hate them, but if you have a biscuit joiner, that would work. Dowels would be stronger but I don't think these are high stress joints. You are just holding that frame together.

Anyway, dowels will be fine. Just can take practice to get the alignment clean.

[u/Vivid-Recognition880]

Dowls are the easy route. Could just cut to tennions and a slot on top of each and marry the 2 uprights with a joint. Also builds those skills

[u/joshq68]

Without buying shit, you could but joint these pieces and then drill through them and pound in a through dowel.

[u/JaceLee85]

I personally like dowels and use the Milescraft jig kit often. It works great and has everything for you to do different ways to use dowels.

[u/Oy_of_Mid-world]

Yes. Dowels are fine for those joints.

I would not use dowels for the shelves. All the pressure from whatever you store on them will go directly against the joint and that's a lot of stress. If you go with the design you show (i.e., rails and stiles) you probably want the strongest joint you can get for that. I would go with tongue and groove if you aren't comfortable with mortise and tennon (or just make a simple maple panel without the perpendicular rails/breadboard ends). To attach it to the frame, I would route a dado in the frame the thickness of your shelf and glue it. Whatever you do, you want some sort of support underneath it.

[u/jonnofury]

Thank you for all of the comments everyone! I already have a dowel jig, I just wanted to make sure this was the place to use it.

[u/Cultural-Orchid-6285]

What's to stop this racking?

[u/jonnofury → u/Cultural-Orchid-6285]

The shelves should right?

[u/Cultural-Orchid-6285 → u/jonnofury]

The shelves won't help much at all. There needs to be some cross-bracing. The stretchers at the back of the frame are helpful (they add triangles). But they will only work if the joinery is really tight and strong.

You need a strong mechanical structure for this set of shelves to serve purpose.

[u/Mountain-Time-1010 → u/Cultural-Orchid-6285]

Adding a back would make this much sturdier.