A Dutchman is a technique or devise for joining two pieces of wood together. Picture a figure-eight with square corners, or two dovetails set end to end tapering to a waist in the middle. A physical description might be, a piece of wood one and a half inches long by three-quarter inches wide with an angle of seven degrees cut from each corner and meeting in the middle of the length. The earliest example of Dutchmen in my own experience was a Peruvian cupboard from the 17th century, brought into my shop for repair. The sides of the cabinet consisted of three boards joined together, edge to edge, with Dutchmen...but I would guess the Peruvian craftsman did not call them Dutchmen. I think the term, Dutchmen, is meant to denote thrift. A wide board subject to expansion and contraction by the elements will split. Rather than replace the board, a Dutchmen would be used to check the split from widening or opening further. The Peruvian cabinet had additional Dutchmen in the side boards, installed years later, for just this purpose; and that is how I repaired the cabinet. The grain of a Dutchmen is usually set at right angles from the grain of the two boards being joined. In the case of the handrail, this would be an exception. You can make a through Dutchmen, showing on either side of an assembly, or the Dutchmen can be pocketed, like a one-half inch thick Dutchmen holding together a mass, or the butt ends of a two inch by three inch handrail. A Dutchman would have been a devise in common usage prior to the invention of glue, and the advent of frame and panel construction, which tends to alleviate the problems of associated with expansion and contraction. daclark
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17 years ago