The Dummy Method for Building Wooden Frames

A real box joint

Most of the Antisocial Network's awardees from good ol' eHow.com¹ could have avoided the (dis)honor by simply passing up questions about stuff they didn't know. Some, however, decided to compound their error by answering questions that, when you come right down to it, make no sense. That's what we found for today's honoree, newbie Daniella Lauren, who attempted to address the topic of "How to Join Wood Frames"² for eHow.com; and failed miserably.

Lauren, whose educational background is in history and elementary education (fields where they apparently don't teach wood shop), started out by telling any readers who wander past that,

"Both large and small woodworking projects use two-by-fours to create a frame. Joining wood frames is necessary to complete projects and have a guide for finishing carpentry projects..."

...which we figured out is proof positive that she had no idea what she was talking about. After all, at least in our experience³, very few "small woodworking projects use two-by-fours to create a frame." Be that as it may, Daniella took on the topic head-on, by which we mean that she used a whole 111 words to describe three different types of joints: box, butt, and miter. We have to admit that we wondered how often framing carpenters use miter joints, but hey, we'll give her that one. Our main question, however, is just where the heck she came up with this rubbish:

"Place one end of wood at a right angle against the other. This is a box joint. Place a nail against the wood and hammer it into the other, connecting the joint."

But Lauren's next instruction reads,

"Create a butt joint by placing the end of one piece of wood at any place along the second piece. Connect the two boards by hammer nails into the two boards,"

which, of course, made us wonder what the difference is between her "box" and "butt" joints. Hint: nothing. And in what language is the construct "connect... by hammer nails" acceptable?

No, Daniella, that's not a box joint. Both of those paragraphs describe butt joints. That's not to mention that you omitted all manner of information about joinery, mis-described a box joint, forgot dovetails, didn't mention mortise and tenon... In other words, you provided almost no information and got part of what you did write wrong. Do you think a Dumbass of the Day award is in order? We do...

¹ The mother lode of internet stupidification, eHow's parent company recently changed its name to Leaf Group
² The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/how_7875683_join-wood-frames.html
³ Which is, we have to say, pretty extensive...

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