Rebate joint
Also called: rebate, rabbet, rabbet joint, rebated joint, lapped rebate
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A rebate is a step-shaped recess cut along the edge or across the end of a piece of wood, removing a strip so that a shoulder and a matching face are left for another piece, or an adjoining edge, to fit against.
Cutting a rebate by hand
A rebate is one of three basic housing cuts, known as housers: the other two are the dado and the groove. It is generally cut with a rabbet plane, called a rebate plane in British usage, a tool whose cutting edge is set either into the sole or into the side of the plane, and whose blade runs the full width of the sole, so careless handling can easily cut a finger. Because a plain rabbet plane is hard to guide accurately, a version fitted with an adjustable side fence, called a filletster plane, is generally preferred: the fence bears against the stock's edge and is adjusted to suit whatever width of rebate is wanted, keeping the cut even. A guide fence serves the same purpose on other planes, keeping the cut running straight. One particular pattern, the sash fillister, has a stop that travels along a vertical groove on the left side of the stock and, unlike a similar plane, carries no rebate cut into its own left side. A smaller, one-handed pattern called the bullnose rabbet plane has a removable nose piece and an adjustable mouth suited to fine or coarse work, while the ordinary rabbet plane has an open-sided mouth, like a shoulder plane, letting it trim into square internal corners such as mouldings or panel checks. Small teeth called nickers, fitted ahead of the blade, score the wood fibres when a cut runs across the grain; whether the plane cuts along or across the grain at all depends on whether its iron sits square or angled in the sole. A rebate no wider than the plane's sole can be finished by working straight along the bottom; a wider one also needs the plane guided against the rebate's vertical face. Where no rebate plane is to hand, fitting a sharp cutter in place of a marking gauge's usual point will serve instead. A router bit with a guide bearing can cut a rebate across a board's end efficiently, and on any tool the fence is set to the wanted width before cutting begins. A rebate-based joint can also be built up from separate cuts, working a plough, rebate and bead plane in turn and gluing and screwing loose tongues into place.
Rebates in frames, doors and drawers
Before cutting certain rebate-based corner joints, such as the half-blind tongue-and-rebate, where the rebate hides a stub of end grain inside a mitred corner, or the lock mitre, an interlocking mitred joint, the faces of the pieces should first be sanded. In simple frame-and-carcase work, meaning a frame set inside a boxed carcase, the frame may simply sit in a rebate cut into the carcase and be held with angled, countersunk screws, brass ones for better-quality work. Rebating the frame as well as the carcase lets the corner dovetail sit nearer the edge, giving a stronger joint; cutting the rebate on the outer face of the frame leaves behind a tongue that fits a matching groove in the carcase. In drawer making, a common rebate on a drawer front measures the same in width as in depth, three-eighths of an inch in one worked example; a spacer sets the drawer front away from its stop, leaving the first pin socket, the narrow gap between two dovetail pins, half a pin, half the width of one dovetail pin, from the rebate's shoulder. On a lid, a matching rebate is cut into the sides but not carried around the top edges. Where two doors meet, the rebated edge between them is cut with a slight bevel so the doors clear each other on opening, and on a door that swings on a curved path the rebate's face is shaped tangent to that path, meaning it follows a line that just touches the circle of the door's swing without crossing it, so it stays clear as the door moves. Ellis, writing in 1908, explained the idea directly: a plane tangent to a circle is outside that circle, and therefore clear of it during its movement. In glazing work, a bead of putty is run along the back of a rebate to seat the glass. A related joint, the tongue-and-lap, was developed to hide the exposed end grain, the surface left where wood is cut across its fibres, that a corner-housed rebate leaves visible; some corner joints made with a housed rebate leave no surfaces glued along the grain at all, which limits how strong they can be.
How a rebate affects joint strength
Cutting a rebate removes part of a tenon's edge, so on a rebated mortise-and-tenon frame the matching mortise, the socket the tenon fits into, has to be cut correspondingly shorter to suit. Running a rebate fully through a rail also cuts into both the tenon and the piece holding its mortise, weakening each. Long and short shoulders, meaning a tenon cut with one shoulder longer than the other to fill the space left by a rebate, are not needed where the rebate is instead formed with a router or spindle moulder, a power tool that shapes wood with a rotating cutter, after the frame has already been assembled.