Box Joint Positioning Question

[GoingMyWay]

This may be a really dumb question (sorry if it's been asked before):

Is there a general rule of thumb for determining the layout of joints for a basic box?  I often finding myself struggling to figure out which should be the inside or the outside of the joint.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't really matter, but I wonder if there is a "standard" way of making the determination.

Pardon my very rudimentary Sketchup skills or lack thereof, but is option 1 or option 2 better?

[attachimg=1]

I was planning on making a hinged top that would be 29"x15" and would cover the whole box.

 

[nclemmons]

I normally do finger joints or dovetails on those types of boxes.  Dovetails will tend to have the tails on the sides and pins on the front and back. That gives the best strength on drawers since the tails capture the pins.

On dowels or dominos, I like to have it so that the lateral force of pulling the box out or the drawer does not stress the dominos in trying to pull them out.

Make sense?

So if the top is hinged, I'd personally go with Option 2 with the top hinged along the back as you have drawn it. It also hides the end grain from view to the front of the box or drawer if that's what you are making.

 

[GoingMyWay]

Thank you for the reply.  I probably should have specified that I was planning on making this out of 3/4" MDF and was going to use dominos to join everything.  The top will be hinged also.  I started to try to include the lid into Sketchup, but for some reason the scale didn't seem to look right so I gave up.

Maybe this "option 3" is best as the front won't have any visible joints:

[attachimg=1]

 

[Sparktrician]

I'll suggest joining it such that the front (whether it's the wide side or the narrow side) is totally displayed, UNLESS your joinery is something that you want to display.  That said, when you're making drawers, there's much more joint strength required in the joints that hold the front of the drawer to the sides, and in this case, using dominoes from the sides adds significantly more strength, although it makes the ends of the sides more visible.  This usually doesn't matter if you're adding on drawer fronts that cover the drawer box.  In any case, MDF doesn't have the overall strength of hardwood, so use more dominoes than you would with hardwood.  Make sense?  [smile]

 

[GoingMyWay]

The joinery is definitely not something that I'm looking to showcase.

It sounds like the positioning of the joints is most important for a drawer where there will be actual pulling forces applied - that makes total sense to me now that you pointed that out.  In this case, it's a static box that shouldn't be receiving any kind of pulling, well maybe there will be some force when the hinged lid is lifted up, but overall it's not that important.