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I'm going to be building a portable podium for my church, and I'm planning on 4 curved legs like a candle stand - my question is, should I be attaching those legs with mortise and tenon, or will the pocket hole screws hold up to that sort of abuse?

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what are the dimensions of the "post"?
Forgot to mention that, sorry. The post Is 1 1/2 square cut to a octagon and the top is 16x28. I'd prefer a larger post so that I can do M&T but they want a small post so you can grab it with one hand. Thus I don't think a tenon will have room.
I was looking through some of my old woodworking magazines last night and found something similar to what you're doing. It only had 3 feet instead of 4. The post was cut into an octagon like you're doing, also. They did something like a sliding dovetail in the legs that went into a groove in the post.
Seemed pretty strong.
So, do you think a pocket hole would have the strength in place of the dovetails here, or would I need to go to them to prevent the wood being pulled apart?
I thought I had posted a reply to this but apparently I only typed it up and never actually added it. Anyway I would probably use dowels and only three legs. The dowels would be as strong as the small mortise and tenon that you have room for there and would be easier to cut than the sliding dovetails. Three legs would make it more steady on uneven floors than four legs. I do not think that this is a good application of pocket screws, if the glue fails, the screws can easily rip out in this application. I am a fan of pocket hole joinery but it does have it's limitations, in my opinion this is one of them.

Chris Lindell said:
So, do you think a pocket hole would have the strength in place of the dovetails here, or would I need to go to them to prevent the wood being pulled apart?
I talked to a guy at work who's done something similar before and he thought I should give it a bigger base, so I went to a 3x3 that tapers up to the 1.5x1.5 quickly. I don't have a dowling jig, so will do either dovetail or mortise and tenon. I'm thinking I could still probably get away with pocket holes to attach the top and top braces though.

Whatever works for you. A couple of dowel centers is all the jig you would need to use dowels in this application. Rockler has a set of 8 for less than $7.00. But there is nothing wrong with the sliding dovetails if you are set up to cut them accurately, lots more glue surface than dowels, that's for sure.

Chris Lindell said:
I talked to a guy at work who's done something similar before and he thought I should give it a bigger base, so I went to a 3x3 that tapers up to the 1.5x1.5 quickly. I don't have a dowling jig, so will do either dovetail or mortise and tenon. I'm thinking I could still probably get away with pocket holes to attach the top and top braces though.

My concern would be the placement of the screws. Putting screws in from that many directions in such a small post you can possibly run into the problem of the screws hitting one another. Other than that I do not see using screws being a problem. In my experience, they would definitely be stronger than dowels.

If you were wanting to do four legs, the strongest would be to make the legs interlock then insert them into the post. For example, instead of having four individual legs have two legs intersect to make it look like an X. Then notch out your post and slide the leg assembly into the post. If that makes any sense .

Pocket-holes would definitely be fine for putting the top on.

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