Butt joint

A butt joint is a technique in which two pieces of wood are joined by simply butting them together. The butt joint is the simplest joint to make since it merely involves cutting the wood to the appropriate length and butting them together. It is also the weakest because unless some form of reinforcement is used (see below) it relies upon glue alone to hold it together. Because the orientation of the wood usually present only end to long grain gluing surface, the resulting joint is inherently weak.

Methods

The butt joint is a very simple joint to construct. Members are simply docked (cut off) at the right angle and have a required length. One member will be shorter than the finished size by the thickness of the adjacent member. For enclosed constructions, such as four-sided frames or boxes, the thickness of the two adjacent members must be taken into consideration. For example: when constructing a four sided box made from 19mm thick material that is to be of finished size 600mm x 600mm, two of the members will be docked at 600mm and two will be docked at 600mm - 19mm - 19mm = 562mm.