Super Skinny DT Pins

[John Hart]

Geez Mark....beautiful work!!

[Mark Singer]

John,

The Ash dovetails I made with my son Ryan for his bed........the drawer I found on Google Images and it someone elses work, beautiful though...I was trying to find a ratio that was less than half to show Steve. We are discussing proportions and lenght of pins compared to length of tails.

Geez Mark....beautiful work!!

[Clay Craig]

I just yesterday watched the episode of 'Tools and Techniques' in which Jeff Cosman does DTs with David Thiel. Jeff brought a sample with him, which had ultra-thin half-blind DTs cut in a sample corner roughly 4 inches 'tall' - the tails board was thicker than the pins board (would have been a funny-looking drawer), but neither looked to be over 1/2 inch thick. These had the pins at a width with tips that were no wider than a very-skinny saw kerf, and IIRC they were 1:8.

Cosman had Thiel (who's no 98-pound lightweight) place the corner on the floor point-up, and stand on the point - it didn't fail. Because of the differing forces on the two pieces, the 'strongest possible' ratio of pin-width to tail-width would not be 1:1, it would call for thinner pins. While the razor-thin pins may be slightly less strong than the strongest-possible ratio, the difference would be meaningless except at the very strength limit, and after seeing that very-small joint (roughly like one corner of a 4"-high drawer, made of under half-inch stock) support a lot of weight (let's just say something over 160 pounds) on the point without failing, I think it'd be a rare situation that called for strength beyond that allowed by ultra-thin DTs.

So, I'd say you could succumb entirely to your aesthetic desire for the thin DTs, without worrying about strength.

Clay

[Jerry Palmer]

I like to vary the spacing as well as the size, and I'm not saying to make the pins and tails even approximately the same size. Application also should dictate as in the drawer with the very narrow pins (you must have like a 1/16" chisel to get into the sockets for those ). In that case, the stress on the drawer is generally going to be parallel with the pin boards and little twisting or torqueing stress (if the drawer is properly sized and isn't prone to sticking) where-as in a case carcass, there could be some angular forces at times at a corner. Of course with other cross members that torqueing should be minimized, but I would want a bit more meat in the pins.