Proud joint

Also called: proud, standing proud

A joint or a part is called proud when it stands a little higher than the surface around it, whether by design or by a small excess deliberately left for trimming away later.

Left proud on purpose, for trimming

Woodworkers often leave a part deliberately proud, meaning slightly oversized, because trimming it down afterwards is easier and more accurate than cutting it exactly flush the first time. When laying out finger joints, an interlocking row of square fingers cut into the ends of two boards, a woodworker adds the amount they want left proud onto the stock-thickness figure used for the layout; once the joint is glued up, trimming the protruding ends down is quicker than sanding or planing them flat some other way. The same principle applies to lap and bridle joints, both formed by fitting one notched or grooved piece against another: the long grain, the surface running along the direction of the wood fibres, is deliberately left a small amount high at assembly, to be planed level afterwards. A workbench's top cap and front piece are built the same way, left a little above the bench surface and then planed level together once fitted, and a wood plug fixed into brickwork is sawn off close to, but just above, the brick face rather than flush with it, for the same reason.

Left proud by design

Not every proud surface is a temporary excess. Stormproof casement windows, hinged windows built to shed driving rain, are set slightly higher than, and only partly let into, the main frame around them, by design rather than for later trimming. Some makers leave splines, the thin strips of wood let into a joint to reinforce it, standing proud of the surface on purpose, cutting them from a contrasting wood such as cherry or oak so the joint reads as a decorative feature; the proud ends can then be chamfered or hand-carved for further effect.

Diagnosing and correcting an unwanted proud edge

A proud edge is not always wanted. A door edge that rubs against its frame can mean the hinges themselves sit too high, in which case the fix is to cut their recesses deeper rather than plane the door down. Raised veneer, a thin sheet of decorative wood lifted slightly above the panel it is glued to, is pared back level using a carefully honed try-plane, a long hand plane used for flattening broad surfaces, worked diagonally out from the panel's centre to avoid tearing the grain; the final, very thin shavings are taken off instead with a steel scraper, a flat blade drawn across the surface to pare off fine curls of wood. A rebate plane, correctly set up, is in one sense deliberately proud itself: its cutter must project a little beyond the plane's body on the rebate side, and be honed square across its edge, or the tool will not cut a true rebate.