Ikea’s new wedge dowel joint makes stronger furniture and faster assembly(2017)

Ikea is easy to make fun of, but it's really done a lot of interesting work. Tim Harford lists the Billy Bookcase as one of the 50 inventions that shape the modern economy: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38747485

I wonder if Ikea helps enable geographic mobility: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/10/does-ikea-enable-mobility

The real secret to Ikea furniture lasting is to glue all the pieces together as you assemble.

That is blasphemous! It would be like gluing Legos together.

Which is what they do at Legoland.

Looks like a modified sliding dovetail.

Who knew that joinery techniques hundreds of years old could make furniture stronger?

We might have known that, but I didn't know that they could be manufactured at scale and then assembled by the lowest common denominator while maintaining acceptable quality.

I thought that these techniques were stuck in my father's woodshop.

Maybe not the lowest common denominator:

https://youtu.be/XjE4q2EyzoQ