Thread: Lap joint wall adjustment

Use a piece of hardwood as a guide for the chisel but before attacking anything make sure everything is square and and all walls are flat from top to bottom.

How did you mark up the gap in the first place? To me it would seem that hasn't helped your situation - not having any fine joinery experience, YT tells me that if you're marking off the workpiece and cutting square and all the way to the marked edges, you shouldn't have this kind of problem?

Have a look at this:
https://woodgears.ca/shop-tricks/dado_spacer.html

I did this joint maybe mid last year and marked it out with a knife and did the cuts with a sled and could line the knife mark exactly with the sled's kerf. The joint fit but was extremely tight. I was just wondering if there is a good way to take off a very tiny amount, im talking fraction of a mm. At the time I thought about using a file but was worried that it would end up being curved and not square.

I like the dado spacer idea though will use that in the future

Originally Posted by qwertyu

I did this joint maybe mid last year and marked it out with a knife and did the cuts with a sled and could line the knife mark exactly with the sled's kerf. The joint fit but was extremely tight. I was just wondering if there is a good way to take off a very tiny amount, im talking fraction of a mm. At the time I thought about using a file but was worried that it would end up being curved and not square.

I like the dado spacer idea though will use that in the future

Hi Qwertyu

We have all done this. As I see it, there are two fairly easy solutions:

1. As Chris suggested, use a very sharp chisel to pare away a very thin shaving; the square block really does help with the vertical alignment. OR
2. Use a very sharp plane to take a very fine shaving off the other surface - the surface that goes into the mortise.

You are in a good position. Recovery would be much harder if the trench was too wide.


Cheers

Graeme

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Hi Qwertyu

We have all done this. As I see it, there are two fairly easy solutions:

1. As Chris suggested, use a very sharp chisel to pare away a very thin shaving; the square block really does help with the vertical alignment. OR
2. Use a very sharp plane to take a very fine shaving off the other surface - the surface that goes into the mortise.

You are in a good position. Recovery would be much harder if the trench was too wide.


Cheers

Graeme

Point number 2 seems so obvious and didnt think of it. Surprising as I've watched so many ishatani videos on youtube and he has that machine which automatically planes are super thin shaving off for these sorts of joints