The Surprise in Ignorance

I posted a picture on my FB recently showing two draw bore pins slightly protruding from the end cap of a breadboard end tabletop. I was surprised that so many confidently identified and asserted these two end-grain protrusions as our now commonly used wood plugs, and then that these plugs were hiding screwheads. They then identified the tenon haunch of the tenon that was visible as a short tenon where the plugs made no sense because they didn't reach the tenon anyway and would serve no purpose. Of course, even though I mention that the table is over a hundred years old and made from solid wood. It shows that culturally, people thinking from the new era assumed that the slightly protruding circles were indeed wood plugs of the type used in modern-day woodworking to hide screwheads and not the anchor points to fix tenons in place in mortises. They also never knew that, on the 90º corners on some frames, we use a short aspect to the tenon called a haunch that enables us to fully enclose…