I have been working on a design for a stand for my 20 gallon aquarium to sit on. Each side of a square is 2 inches long in my diagrams. Pocket hole joints are indicated by double arrows, while the lil box thingies are L brackets. I plan to attach the top to the legs using figure 8 brackets.
Are there obvious ways I could improve my design? This will be my first serious woodworking project.
Here are the side and top views:
Needs proper joinery. Mortise and tenon would be strongest. I've tried "cheating" by using those cheap dowels and a drill for something like this, but it eventually failed, so I do mortise and tenon now. Wedged and/or pinned tenons would be even stronger, but I haven't tried those yet. I also haven't tried the stuff meant for power tools, like biscuits, so dunno how strong those would be.
Mortise and tenon joinery is good, but pocket screws with glue is also extremely strong.
Dowels, when used with actual wood (not press board) is also plenty for this application.
Looking at this design, the main issue is racking forces, which M/T joints may hold up slightly better to, but a thin sheet of 1/4" plywood stapled or glued on the back and sides would also lock this into place and prevent racking.
Really, this design is probably fine, but there's a handful of details that aren't shown, and would be critical to the success.
I've had mortise & tenon plus pocket screw from the factory fail on chairs. Granted they were probably 20+ year chairs. I'm very weary of pocket screw alone as the materials don't warp and bend the same way. I've built a couch using wedged tenon (mostly just for fun), that spent many years outside without major issues. I've made indoor, load bearing furniture, with just glued dowels fail after maybe 4 years indoors. The glue failed in this case, and I think I used Gorilla Wood Glue. IDK, if you want long lasting stuff, I've came to the conclusion that most of the load needs to be bore by the the actual wood joinery, and glue just to keep it in place.