Common in old houses, it’s where the leg of beaded casing meets the head. The beaded portion of the casing is mitered, but the flat portion is butt-joined. Typically, there’d be backband around the outside of the casing as well. What I’d like to know is if there is a less-awkward common name for this hybrid joint than “butt-miter joint.”
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Replies
Andy -
For those of us who are "old house challenged" - Any chance you could come up with a picture of what you're talking about?
It's lonely at the top, but you eat better.
Then I'd have to figure out how to post it, and that's a stretch for a cyber-challenged Luddite such as myself. I'll see if I can't come up with something. Andy Engel, Forum moderator
Here is a crude drawing of the joint Andy is describing. Apparently common in 1940's era colonials cause I have plenty of them.
Eric Svendson
Ya know, Andy - I'm starting to wonder about you and this Luddite thing. aren't you the one who was talking about how great cordless impact drivers were just a day or 2 ago ???
Our relationship is like a game of checkers. That's why I'm always trying to jump you.
How many posts before you run out of those neat sayings you append? I often enjoy them more than the posts (not saying anything against your posts)
Won't be running out of them anytime soon - I have a couple hundred, I think. I try to rotate them so the same one doesn't come up too often. It's just miscelaneous baloney I've gathered off the internet.
x
Andy, You forced me to do a web search on LUDDITE and I found out why you are a moderator and magazine publisher...you broke the bosses tools!
Shame on you.
Dont try to weasel out of this with a different definition!!
It is hard to type with your tongue in cheek.
I look down my nose at people who dare to look down their nose at people.
ndy
This is not a joint, but rather an assembly.
I looked in "Finish Carpentry", Best of FHB. I thought that there was an example, but not of this style.
But looking at the picture on page 69 I would describe it by the assembly. Butted casing with (miter) backbanding.
What are you trying to get across to the reader?
The hard part is that the bead on both the head and the leg is mitered, but the bead is only along one edge of a molding that's usually about 3 in. wide. The miters on the leg and the head stop where the bead meets the flat portion of the casing. The leg then is just square cut, with its bead clipped off at a 45 degree angle. The head however, is harder. The carpenter has to rip the bead off the portion of the head that overlaps, or butts, the leg. It's a time consuming joint, and one that I've seen quite a few of in older East Coast homes.
The backband was an accidental red herring - It's common on that type of casing, but unrelated to the joint.
I'm not so much a Luddite when it comes to tools. Computers, yeah, but there's a beauty in the way that a cordless impact driver, or any good tool, works that I don't see in any computer that's not flying out an upper floor window.
Andy Engel, Forum moderator
I spent over a year building cabinets with that same detail on the faceframes, and flush fit doors and drawers. The single joint you're talking about isn't too tough to cut with a radial arm saw, but the doubles, like at the ends of a face frame stile that seperates two banks of drawers is pretty exacting - doesn't take much to take too much material out. I'd tell you what I call them, but we're supposed to watch our language here.
I was hoping for a livlier topic when I saw the title of this thread, what with "joints" and "beads" and all. Bummer, man.
Edited 5/23/2002 5:04:25 PM ET by jim blodgett
I know what you are talking about. I have seen pictures of it on Craftsman/Bungalow style homes from the 1910-20's. In fact I am think about putting some around my windows when I remodel.
I had always assumed the bead was separately applied.
But I have seen what you are talking about on the frames of frame and pannel construction furniture. There they need the extra strenght and is frame it made with mortise and tenons.
I don't have a book of joints, but I did find one reference to it in Bill Hyton's "Illustrated Cabinetmaking".
He calls it an M&T with stuck molding.
"Stuck molding is a profile cut directly on the rails and stiles of a frame. The trick in join the frame parts is to have the profile on the rail meet the profile on the stile in a neat miter."
"To do this, cut the decorative profile directly on the inside edge of each frame part, then pare the modling back to a miter in the area of the mortise. Cut a matching miter on the teon piece."
I guess that you could call it a "butt joint with stuck molding".
Go down the hall to FWW and get a couple of the new book that they have out on joints and see if there is any other name for it.
Then, since the book is used and can be sold, you can send it to me.
Bill
We've always called it a "jack miter." I've got no idea how Jack mighta got his name on this junction, but it fits...and, I'm with Blodgett, I was hoping for some Cheech and Chong trivia...
Andy...there's a pic in Traditional Woodwork...by Rodriguez........taunton press....should ring a bell......on pages 116 and 117...he does a more complex "stepped miter joint" a few pages later. The chapter is door and window casing.
Shows cutting the bead with an angled support block and a back saw. Jeff "That's like hypnotizing chickens........."
Hijacking my own thread now, Jeff, what do you mean by hypnotizing chickens? Andy Engel, Forum moderator
favorite line from a great Iggy Pop tune.....the one that's played for some cruise line in tv commercials.......Lust for Life.......Funny...I think they start with....
"Here come Johny Yen again....."
but then they cut out the next line...."he got liquor and drugs"....."he's a sex machine"
wonder why that is?
Anyhoo......at some point in the song....Iggy professes.....
"That's like hyp-no-ti-sing chickens".......and I thought.........can't argue that logic!
Bet amazon has it as a download/preview for one of his albums...give it a look see.
Jeff "That's like hypnotizing chickens........."
Since the FORUM MODERATOR can't figure out how to use this great new site, and post a picture, I will guess that what you are all referring to is a ####-bead. Look in Jim Tolpins book, "Built in furniture".
If I was busted by the ' Dispairo' profanity police, Thats c-o-c-k-b-e-a-d
It just occurred to me that you are embarrassed to use the term "butt-mitre" when talking to certain "sensitive" clientele.
I guess my answer won't pass either Oh well
T
Layers Onions Have Layers, Carpenters Have Layers
Edited 5/25/2002 9:14:17 AM ET by Mr T
No, it's not a c0ck bead. Here's a c0ck bead.T. Jeffery Clarke
Quidvis Recte Factum Quamvis Humile Praeclarum
Not embarassed, just unsure of the name of the joint. And yes, it's named in several Taunton books. It's not the best journalism, however, to use your own company's material as reference. That's a great way to perpetuate a mistake.
My neighbor claims to have hynotized chickens as a youngster by holding their heads down to a sheet of paper with a dotted line drawn on it. He claims to have quite annoyed his father by doing this so much so that it reduced egg production. I thought he was spinning yarns, being a children's book author.
It's not just this site I haven't figured out how to post images to: It's pretty much all sites. Technology alternately bores, frustrates and annoys me, so I haven't invested the time to learn how to use it.Andy Engel, Forum moderator
Hey, Andy and Jeff-
Hypnotized lots of chickens as a kid, kind of a parlor trick for the barnyard. Find a fairly smooth surface, grab the buck-buck and hold it so it's head is down with beak pointing forward. While holding the poor animal, take your index finger and draw an imaginary straight line directly in front of the bird's beak, keep drawing that line back and forth for a minute or two. Carefully release your grip on the hapless hen and the bird will remain transfixed on the imaginary line. Remember that they stayed that way for 10 or 15 minutes, or the ones that seemed 'stuck' a swift kick would bring 'em back. Poor chicken. Cruel kid.
Ken Hill
I stand corrected
Layers
Onions
Have
Layers,
Carpenters
Have
Layers
What you call the joint is going to depend on the joint itself....could be a M/T, could be some form of butt joint. If the bead is moulded into the pieces, then they are called 'stuck' (as against 'planted' or applied)....it's only a #### bead if the bead is proud of the flat part. Beyond that, everyone I think is going to make up their own name....I've never seen a commonly used name for the joint. I'd probably call it a butt (or M/T) with mitred bead.
It's not hard to do; most joiners and cabinetmakers used to keep a little homemade block in their tool kits ( I still do)....there was one piece with a 45 deg. ramp cut on one end, and a piece attached to the side that hung down, and acted as a clamping pad to position the 'ramp'....then you just pared down the ramp with a chisel to cut the mitre on the bead, and sawed, planed, and chisled in the straight part where the head butts in....it's just coping a joint, really. I didn't look at the pictures; maybe there's a picture of one already up.cabinetmaker/college instructor. Cape Breton, N.S
"Bead and Flush"?
These entries are from: http://www.restorationonline.com/features/commonterms.asp#J
BEAD
a small moulding of a semicircular section, and much used in architectural decoration, both externally and internally. Beads very frequently occur in joinery being formed by a plane, and adopted as a finishing to the edges of boards.A bead which projects beyond the face of a framing on which it is situated, is called a #### bead, thus: One that does not, but is even with the surface, is called a quirk bead, thus:
BEAD AND BUTT
commonly called Bead butt, the name given to framing when a small bead is placed on the edges of the panels in the direction of the grain of the wood, and generally occurring when the surface is even with the framing, as in the backs of doors, shutters, etc.
BEAD AND FLUSH
commonly called Bead flush, a framing with a bead run round the inner edges of the rails and stiles, or those next the panels, and generally employed in the front of doors, etc.
BEAD AND QUIRK, or QUIRK BEAD
a bead situated upon an angle, but run on one edge only, without being returned at the other side, consequently having only one quirk.
BEAD, AND DOUBLE QUIRK, or RETURNED QUIRK
a bead which is even with the surface on which it is situated, and returned each way, thereby having a quirk on each side.
Thanks!Andy Engel, Forum moderator
Andy - I see this all the time in pre-1825 houses. It allows for a lot more movement without opening up the joint than a simple miter. I'm sorry but I don't know if there is/was a specific name for this detail.
The door casing would have been referred to as an 'architrave' so you could say that it is a beaded, single-faced butt-jointed architrave with mitred backband. 'Backband' was used at the time, and the 'faces' refer to how many steps there are the trim from bead to backband (usually single- or double-faced in Colonial millwork). Source - 1786 Philadelphia Carpenter's Rules.
T. Jeffery Clarke
Edited 5/23/2002 4:56:12 PM ET by Jeff Clarke
we call it an "arrowhead mitre".
no turn left unstoned
Andy, I'm not certain what it is called although I call it a half-miter, but what the heck do I know? I used it pretty much exclusively in both houses I have had. In our current house I am modeling our trim on the trim in the 200 yr old stone house up the street.
In the trim pictured the bead is not applied separately, it is part of the flat 4" wide piece. I had to search to find a 3/16" bead cutter for my router that had as narrow a kerf as the blades in my Stanley 45; S/Y bits from Grizzly are a perfect match, at least in the narrow quirk bead varieties. It is indistinguishable from hand-planed unless there is a mistake, router mistakes are different than hand plane mistakes.
PS: just looked around for definitions and this joint is definately not a "half-miter".
Edited 5/28/2002 10:03:41 PM ET by WFLATHER
Edited 5/29/2002 8:27:57 AM ET by WFLATHER
I'll second the motion for "jack-miter". This is what my father called it (and he knew a lot about these things). I not only see them a lot, but we use them a lot. I don't think it takes much more time than any other joint. Usually I cut the miter with a jigsaw or standing upright against the fence of a chopsaw, then rip off the bead with the jigsaw, leaving the trim a little long, and then cut the end to fit flush. I have seen it done with both a long head going over the legs of the molding and the reverse.
Actually, as I think about it, I suppose there might be a corollation between "jack rafter" or "jack stud" and "jack miter". I suppose that if you interpreted "jack" to mean something shorter than normal or even 'interrupted' then calling it a "jack miter" would make sense. Maybe someone else who knows the origin of the term "jack" could shed some light on this.
Edited 5/28/2002 4:47:23 PM ET by Nick Pitz
I suspect the bead is a separate piece as it often is on cabinets. Craftsman bungalows in California often have a bead running along the bottom of the head that the legs butt into. I've never seen the legs beaded too; interesting.
No, the beads on colonial casing were always run by hand with a molding plane on the board itself. When we duplicate this detail in restoration work, we sometimes make a custom knife because the bead-cutters today cut too much of a groove between bead and remaining board and too 'full' a bead. In the 'real detail' the bead is cut with a pointed/curved blade from above and looks different than what you can normally make today. If you click on the link below, you can see the 'modern' version - note that the bead continues to curve around the end of the trim. In period work, its shape is more half-round in nature - more like this: U____
Here is a reasonable description of how Andy's detail can be done
T. Jeffery Clarke
Quidvis Recte Factum Quamvis Humile Praeclarum
Edited 5/28/2002 5:22:22 PM ET by Jeff Clarke