Here is a Mission Style Bookshelf I made for my son. It's constucted of red oak, with Minwax Provincial wood finish.

It's mostly dowel pin construction with two pieces joined by motise and tenons on each end for additional horizontal structural integrity.

My own design, inspired by similar pieces I've found photos of online. I designed and made in less than a week. (There are a few minor places where the speed which I made it is evident.)

This design made extensive use of the Mission Furniture Jig I created for another project.

Nice mortise and tenon joint, huh?

OK, well, I cheated a bit. Instead of cutting a rectangular hole in the middle of a single piece, I used my mission jig to create two matching slots in two 1/2x1.5" boards, which were then glued together to act as a single piece.

It may not be a "true" mortise and tenon, but I expect it to be stronger than a dowel pin joint.

The mortise and tenon joints look good enough to where it took close inspection from woodworking friends of mine to notice it was not a traditional mortise and tenon.

Seeing how quickly and acurately I was able to make the joint, I expect to be using this method again in the future. The end result was much better than I expected.

As I already mentioned, most of the joints, 40 somthing or so, are simple dowel pin joints.

That basically means I drilled a hole, tapped in a dowel and some glue, then cut the dowel flush using a flush cut saw.

This makes for a simple, strong, and hard to mess up, nice looking joint.

With some practice, a high quality dowel pin join can be constructed in a matter of a few minutes.

Both dowel pin and mortise and tenon joints are commonly used for mission furniture. The joints are both decorative as well as functional.