Help with breadboards

[Rob Price]

Working with a friend on a walnut dining room table. We've come to the breadboards. He's built several more of these than I have (zero on my end) but I wanted to get some thoughts from you guys. What he normally does is create several tenons on the end of the table top and fit those into wider mortises on the breadboards. He then puts a pin through each tenon to hold it in place. No glue. He does offset the hole in the tenon a hair so when the pin is driven though it pulls the joint tight. It looks and works great, but I'm trying to find a way to do it without through pins. As you can see in the photos, some of the best grain and figure are right at the end of the table, so we don't want to loose any of it making the tenons. So we're going to use his Domino (he just bought the big one) to glue in home made walnut dominos/tenons in the table top that will then fit into loose mortises in the breadboards. I was hoping to just pin from the bottom and not all the way through, but we don't know if it would work with his method of offsetting the tenon holes to hold the joint tight.

Just curious how you guys do your breadboards and if you think hidden pins from the bottom would be enough to hold the breadboard on.

The table top is 44" by 96". The two bookmatched slabs in the middle are 1 3/4" thick, the banding is 2 1/4" thick to give it a more substantial look.


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[Steve Baumgartner]

I've done breadboards with pins only from the bottom many times. You want them to go all the way through the tenon into the top wall of the mortise, but stop shy of the top surface of the table. Just be careful when driving them in that you don't split out or create a bump in the top. Offsetting to drawbore them makes this a bit trickier, since you have to pound harder to drive them home. If possible, spring the breadboard a bit and pull it tight with long clamps instead. Also, elongate the holes in the tenons side-to-side so that the top can expand and contract or it will tear things apart.

[Jim Matthews]

If you're unsure of the hold provided by a truncated pin, you could apply a subtle cleat, underneath.

If this is inset far enough, it will be invisible from a standing position.
This cleat would be fixed to the breadboard, with a slot mounted screw set into the center of the dominos.

This would also act as a stiffener to resist breakage if the table is lifted by the breadboards.

Mount the cleat parallel to the breadboard and allow it to overlap the longitudinal slabs - 3/8" baltic birch would be my choice.
The exposed ends could be trimmed in walnut to hide the works.

[Sam Murdoch]

I think the domino is a great tool for this and as you are doing glue one side and allow the other side to float. Maybe alternate with glued dominos to the table and glued dominos to the end board with the matching elongated slots and alternating the pins. Make certain that the end boards are clamped tightly to the table top before setting the pins and most importantly that the glued in dominos are truly set.
Right now at least - at 11:00 and just before bed - this seems like a very workable (though untried) solution. :rolleyes:

[Kent A Bathurst]

No opinion on the Domino...never used one...I do mine by cutting multiple tenons, as you mentioned, but it sure seems the domino would work fine.

You don't say what the thickness of the dominos will be. FWIW - my 2 cents says that you can drawbore pegs [that's the name for the holes that are offset but a smidgen] from the bottom, without having them go all the way through, as long as there is sufficient wood remaining in the breadboard above the tenon/domino.

You've got a lot of meat in the table top and breadboard end, so you should be able to engineer this without any trouble. The trick is the definition of "sufficient" of course......If you were to take the 1-3/4" table thickness, and divide it into thirds, that is about 9/16 above the tenon. I'd think you'd want to have 4/16 or 5/16 of "bite" for the peg, which leaves a comparable amount - 5/16 or 4/16 of solid wood remaining. If, say, the tenon was 1/2" - plenty enough, IMO - then you could finagle things so that you had 3/4" of the breadboard above the tenon, and 1" below, and you could drive the peg through 1" of breadboard, 1/2" of tenon, and 1/2" of breadboard, with 1/4" solid wood left.

Whatever the dimensions you choose, I would have no problem doing that - 'cept I ain't - you is - so you'll have to make the call. :D

OH - BTW - I put a couple tenons in close to the centerline, and I glue them as well as peg them. There is not enough movement in there to cause problems, IMO. I have elongated holes in unglued tenons as I move away from the centerline.

A photo of a 43" x 86" QSWO top - net at about 1-1/16" thick...I am laying out the mortises here.....apparently I did not shoot a photo after I drilled the holes for the pegs, but the two tenons in the center had a simple hole, and were glued. The outer tenons had elongated holes, and were not glued. This table, however, had through-pegs, drawbored [drawborn??].


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EDIT: It just occurred to me.....In the photo, you can see a continuous tenon that fits into the continuous mortise - and I am doing the layout for the deep mortises to match the projecting tenons. This continuous helps keep things aligned. I don't know how you would do that with the domino. I don't know that you have to do that at all anyway............but I do. Another 2 cents - I'm in for a total of 4 cents now, I guess.....

[Rob Price]

thanks for the feedback. the dominos are 9/16 thick (14mm Domino tool I think). 5 floating tenons, about 6" long and 4" wide. We glued them into the table top today, gonna let it sit overnight and drawbore the breadboards tomorrow. I'll have to decide at some point if we want through or not. what you can't see is the slots are about 1" wider than the tenon on the breadboard end.
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[Kent A Bathurst]

Groovy. Yer good to go. My ignorance of the domino is apparent - I had no idea you could go to those dimensions. Live and learn, eh?

Through-pegs or not-through pegs........that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler to hide the joinery details, or to expose them
And thereby exhibit endgrain pegs for all to see, and at which to marvel, and ask "Whydja do that?",
Or to conceal them and thus suffer the endless queries of the uninformed: "Howdja do that?"

Aye..........there's the rub.

For me, Mr Hamlet - I use through-pegs and a practiced roll-of-the-eyes as my answer to the questions of the proles............ :p :p

Photos of the finished top, please - that walnut should look terrific!!!

[Andrew Hughes]

Hi, Rob thats going to be a great looking table.One thing that comes to my mind is when i make draw bore pegs i like to have a pointy end to help worm its way thru the off set.If the peg doesnt go thru all the way it needs to be almost whole with maybe a chamfer on it edge.Working out how much off set is the key.Maybe a test piece is needed first and cut apart the results.To see how much you can get thru with out blowing out the side or top.Would love to see a pic when its done. Andrew

[Rob Price]

I have a WIP thread over in the projects section but here's a teaser:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-TlqPrZku8zo/UC63nQQWwqI/AAAAAAAABxE/2rKQvKbuYtY/s800/IMG_1409.JPG