A Jig for Every Joint — Explore the Options!

Interlocking joints are what give furniture, cabinet and drawer projects their durability and squareness. You can certainly learn to make box joints, dado joints, dovetails, half-laps and more using only hand tools, just like our forebears did. But Rockler offers many clever jigs that let you use your table saw or router to speed up the joint-making process without losing accuracy or that classic look you're after. Here are six popular joints and a selection of products that can help you machine them with confidence!

Matching rows of fingers and slots contribute significant glue surface area to box joints, which strengthens them and provides dazzling geometry. Box joints are fun to make and commonly used to create sturdy drawers and box carcasses.

Here's a rock-solid joint that involves making a pair of cutouts halfway across the width of two matching workpieces so the parts can slide together flush. Cross lap joints are a great choice for making divided frameworks and shadowboxes.

Cutting a square-sided channel across the grain (a dado) or along the grain (a groove) lets you install shelves and dividers into a bookcase or cabinet much more sturdily than you can with a butt joint. Glue and a few nails hold these joints securely together.

There's no more iconic joint in woodworking than the venerable dovetail, but it's a challenge to cut by hand. Today's quality dovetail jigs make things easier. They let you cut half-blind or through dovetails or both, depending on the design, using only your router and a dovetail bit.

Cutting a broad channel across the faces of two workpieces, half as deep as their thicknesses, produces a sturdy half-lap joint. Our Router Table Half Lap Jig lets you cut conventional as well as mitered half lap joints — here's a great way to strengthen picture frames!

Whether a tenon is an integral part of the workpiece it is attached to, such as in a mortise-and-tenon joint, or inserted into it as a separate piece of wood (often called a "loose" tenon), a tenon fits into a matching excavation in the mating workpiece to lock the joint together. Their exceptional strength makes tenon-style joints ideal for building sturdy frameworks of all sorts.

For an overview of woodworking joinery you may wish to add to your projects, check out this article and accompanying videos: Introduction to Woodworking Joinery.