Joints are grouped by how the members meet. Furniture joints follow Ming assembly order—from boards and rails to legs, tops and bases; timber-frame joints follow how posts, beams and brackets meet. Each is shown as a render from the same angle; click any for its 3D model, how it works and how it is made.
Joints of Ming-style furniture, from the basic meeting of boards, rails and posts, to the way legs carry tops, aprons and bases, and finally the separate pins and keys added to hold it all.
Narrow boards joined edge to edge into a wide one, then kept flat with battens and breadboard ends.
Two boards meeting at a right angle, as in drawers, boxes and slab legs, from fully exposed to fully hidden.
A rail meeting a post in a T, the most common joint in furniture: how the shoulder is cut, whether the tenon runs through, and how several rails share one post.
Square or round members turning a corner, as at the crest rail and arms of a chair, and the corners of slats such as aprons and spandrels.
Two or three straight members crossing at one point, each cut away in part so they interlock.
Short or curved pieces joined end to end, such as the arm rail of a roundback chair.
Four members mitred into a frame with a panel set into a groove, as in table tops, cabinet doors and chair seats.
How the legs carry the top and join the aprons and stretchers. This decides the basic form of a table or chair: waisted, unwaisted, flush-sided, recessed-leg or inserted-shoulder.
Legs standing on a base frame or shoe, or set upright in a heavy wooden foot.
Tenons, pins and wedges made separately and fitted afterwards, where a tenon cannot be cut on the piece, where it must come apart, or where a joint needs tightening.
Joints of building frames, grouped by how the members relate: fixing the posts, tying beams to posts, crossing horizontal members, holding stacked members together, angled and half crossings, and edge-joining boards. A bracket set is an assembly of many such parts.
Joints at the foot of a column or king post that keep it from shifting on its base stone or beam.
Beams and tie-beams meeting columns, where the joint must both carry and hold the frame together.
Purlins and plates joined end to end or crossing at right angles.
Pins that keep two or more stacked members from sliding.
Members that meet at an angle or half-overlap, seated with notches, cups or stepped housings.
Joining members end to end, as in repairing a column foot or lengthening a purlin.
Ways of joining the boards of doors, gables and panels.
Assemblies of blocks and arms stacked layer upon layer to carry the eaves.
Joints of doors, windows, lattice screens and railings.
The Luban lock is a puzzle of notched sticks that lock each other. It borrows the idea of joinery but is not a structural joint of furniture or buildings. About the Luban lock →
