Treatise on wooden nail/peg joinery?

[MauleSkinner]

In the process of figuring out how to make my grandson’s toolbox so that he can nail it together https://forums.woodnet.net/showthread.php?tid=7358014 I ran across some bits and pieces about methods for wooden nail/peg joinery, and I’m wondering if there’s a book or website that addresses it in more detail.

While I understand that there’s a lot of crossover with drawbore joinery and shipbuilding, I’m more interested in the hows and whys of driving a square or octagonal peg into a round hole to nail two pieces together...when it works, when it doesn’t work, hole size, etc.

Mostly what I’m finding is passing mention of it...

Christopher Schwarz mentions it in conjunction with the bookshelf project in The Anarchist’s Design Book. He also had a blog post about 10 years ago regarding an oddly-shaped wooden nail, which Peter Follansbee subsequently addressed in his blog.

Peter F. has a few other blog posts where he discussed how he makes pegs, as well as using them for attaching seats to chairs, tops to stools, and some pictures of boxes assembled using pegs.

Scientific American had a short paragraph in 1871 that I found interesting on page 2 at https://archive.org/details/scientific-a...1/mode/2up

But again, mostly just bits and pieces.

Obviously one of the best answers is to make some test joints, drill some holes, drive wooden nails, and build stuff to see what works and what doesn’t, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[MauleSkinner]

While it’s not quite wooden nail joinery, I Figured I attach it to this thread.

I needed some 3/16” dowels for a project, but I wasn’t happy with the results from my doweling plate (the dowel in the middle is from the doweling plate.) So I drilled a 3/16” hole in a piece of maple, roughly squared up some stock (birch from my son in law’s firewood pile) with my pocket knife, and drove it through. Worked pretty well...compressed the wood instead of shaving it. After the picture was taken, I countersunk the hole and they drove a little smoother. The dowels aren’t exactly straight, but the project is a little “rustic” anyway.

[Phil S.]

A search for treenails turns up a lot of hits, but no holy grail with all the answers.  Richard Maguire has a good article on it here -
https://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/how...oden-pegs/

[MauleSkinner]

Thanks, Phil, but he’s still dealing with drawboring, for which there seems to be plenty of 8nformation...I’m looking for more like this (wooden nail part starts at just after 8 minutes).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3IF_GkAnyEE

[adamcherubini]

I don’t know much about this either. Only things I can add are:

Wooden nails, tree nails, trunnels, are differentiated from pegs in that nails typically must react tension and pegs are always just in shear (mortise and tenon). All nails basically react tension by friction, so the interference fit between the hole and the nail is important. So the act of driving a non square trunnel into a round hole is really the key to making this work. And you are right that the devil is in the details. I always use riven stock, just as I would for pegs, but instead of working it thru the dowelling plate, I taper each piece with a knife or chisel. The key is knowing how much taper and how big the hole should be.

When used to hold a top on a joint stool for example, the holes are bored at some non-90 degree angle. A lowly shell bit does a fantastic job of this. You can start a hole at a much lower angle than a modern twist drill bit. The trick to using a shell accurately is to hold it off the center and ratchet the bit until you have a concentric hole. That’s why you must sharpen both edges.

One more thing: I would orient the nail to put the greatest pressure in the direction of the grain, just like a cut nail. Now that I think of it, I tho I have made all my nails square or octagonal. They probably should have been shaped more like a cut nail.

[MauleSkinner]

Thanks, Adam.

A couple of other assumptions I’m working with (and we all know what happens when you assume) are that dry nails are better, and that the nail should be harder than the wood being joined so that the wood deforms to grip the nail rather than compressing the nail to fit the hole like the dowels I made above.

Do you have any rules of thumb regarding the size of the nail relative to the stock being joined? For example, if you’re nailing the top to a stool with rails that are 3/4” thick, would you use roughly 1/3 of that thickness, or more, or less?

My trial and error in the shop has a small enough error rate that it’s an interesting rabbit hole.

[adamcherubini]

I think you are right that the nails need to be dry and hard. I think I recall Megan talking about hawthorns? I have a lot of rules about drawbore pegs. But I’m not sure about wooden nails. Maybe ask Megan? Not sure stock thickness to nail diameter is the right relationship.

[bandit571]

I seem to remember a video from Japan.....where a case was being assembled with small, wooden "nails".    About the size of large toothpicks.   A square-shanked awl was used to pre-drill a hole for each.....a small dab of glue on the "nail", and then they were hammered home....and trimmed flush.....

[MauleSkinner]

Bandit, if you run across that, I’d love to see it.

[hbmcc]

I remembered what Steve mentioned and went hunting. It's not a chore to do this searching. Found a couple videos.... Not what I remember. I would think bigger dowels and caps for safety would be better. Even "made" screws for easier building and dismantling. 


Wood pins lacking drilling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L41Bw4SX...taroTanaka 
At 2:50

More detail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQNyA0SB...taroTanaka
At 2:15
Shown multiple times through the video.