[Cherryville Chuck]

I agree with Charley on using a TS to cut the fingers. The saw blade only puts pressure back and slightly down. When a router bit enters the wood the left side is spinning outward which wants to tear the grain on that side and when it exits the cut the right side is trying to do the same thing. Both machines can make fingers but the saw does it better so why use a router?

My daughter needed some bench/storage chests to use as storage and seats around her dining table a few years ago. I used some 1 1/2" square pine for corners which I put stopped rabbets in which made the upper portions L shaped. I then glued and screwed 1/2" mdf panels into the rabbets. Along the top and bottom of the mdf sides I trimmed it with 1/4" wood to improve the looks of it. They looked pretty good and they held up close to 500 lbs when used at the table. So that's an alternate possibility for you that will hide the edges of the ply, nit involve cutting fingers and have the plys exposed and is fairly easy to make. You don't need much solid wood to do it either.

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

For some reason I called them finger joints when indeed they are box joints.

Actually the most common term for box joints is finger joints. The reason being when you lace your fingers together that's what it looks like. If you do a google search for finger joints most of the examples will show that joint. Old masters and some of the new ones too call them finger joints. The proper name for the joint Charley mentioned where ends of lumber are joined is a splice joint as that is what it does. The tapered finger's only use is joining lumber together, hence a splice. So when you see the term finger joint don't automatically assume it's not a box joint. I still refer to it as a finger joint because when I lace my fingers together it looks like that joint.

Until all concerned get together and change it, like they did with Pluto's status as a planet to a planetoid, then both terms will get used for the same thing.

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

Lace your fingers together and tell me what that looks like.

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

My point is that many disagree and some of those who disagree are masters who were trained by masters and they are training the next generation of masters. So one shouldn't assume one way or the other.
Finger-Joint Basics | Startwoodworking.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_joint
Box (finger) Joint Jig
https://www.pinterest.ca/miriambaynes/finger-joints/
http://www.shopnotes.com/files/issues/110/fast-and-easy-finger-joints.pdf
Finger Joints

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

You didn't look at the links did you? I've heard that joint also called a tapered finger joint, making it different from a standard finger joint, also called a box joint.That's terminology I heard many decades ago. Some day everyone may concede to your point of view but we aren't there yet.

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

I'm with Stick on this one. A box joint is squared off, a finger joint is tapered. Period. They have separate and distinct purposes. A finger joint can only create a longer, straight piece. A box joint can make a right angle turn, or in theory a longer piece. But you can't make a box with a finger joint. Let's all be purists about this, OK? I think the confusion comes from naming the box joint's protrusions "fingers." If they were called, say, flugles, there'd be less confusion--don't you think?.

You didn't look at my links either, did you?

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

My point was and still is that many people, including most of the group I consider master woodworkers, still refer to the box joint as first being a finger joint. When someone says finger joint it's not a given that they are talking about splicing lumber. If you paid attention to the sources in the links I gave you saw some very respectable sources referring to what you call a box joint as a finger joint, the reason being that the individual projections are called fingers and that when joined together they look like interlaced fingers, no matter what size they are. It's how I refer to them because that's how I learned to refer to them a very long time ago. You guys can argue all you want to but unless you know a way to change history then the traditional way to refer to that joint is as a finger joint.

 

[Cherryville Chuck]

It's unfortunate that box joints have become called finger joints. It confuses the issue. Finger joints are made with long, skinny, pointy elements and are used to join flat parts to make them longer. At least in the commercial world that's what "finger joint" means. They are almost always done on high speed automated lines. I bet if you put "finger joint" into YouTube you can watch one of those line run. And yes you can make them with a shaper or even a router but gluing them up is a PIA.

You missed a lot of the conversation Larry. They were always called finger joints until only recently when, as Charley pointed out, the manufacturers started referring to them as something else. The ones with tapered fingers were called just that or were called splice joints. If you find old literature, that will be the nomenclature you find. When I read articles in Fine Woodworking almost all of their contributors refer to a box joint as a finger joint. Most of those guys went through a training period by old masters. One of the very first contributors to FWW was Tage Frid (pronounced Tay) who was a Danish born and educated master. I'm not sure if FWW would have made it without him. He was trained the old fashioned (European) way and started as an apprentice in a traditional European wood shop. That's what he called the joint in his book on how to make wood joints. It's an excellent book by the way, one of the best woodworking books I've ever read. So that was how he was taught by an even older master than himself. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Maybe one day the terminology will change. Ain't was't in the dictionary when I was young but it is now. Maybe one day no one will refer to it as a finger joint anymore but for now you can still find as many or more references to it being a finger joint and those references are from professional sources. In the mean time the one thing that should happen is for everyone to quit correcting people who call it the other term. It IS a finger joint. It also IS a box joint. Both are correct.