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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Brisbane
    Posts
    925

    Default Mortice and tenon joints

    Over the last few weeks I have had to cut lots of mortice and tenon joints for a couple of projects. For what it is worth here is what I decided was a pleasant and accurate way for me to do this.
    1. I cannot bring myself to enjoy cutting out the mortices by hand. Banging away with a chisel just seems like hard work. So I made a simple jig and use a router and spiral bits. I aware that in a hand tools forum this is akin to advocating murder as a holiday pastime but it is the way it is for me.
    2. I have a mortising gauge but don't use it. I set a single pin on a cutting gauge to approximately the right width and mark the lines for the tenon equal distances from either side of the timber. That way the tenon is going to be centred on the timber. I make sure that the tenons are marked so as to be a bit fatter than their final size.
    3. I use a marking knife to heavily score the cutting lines for the cheeks. This ensures good clean shoulder lines and helps to cut the cheeks accurately.
    4. The tenons are cut to size easily with a little rip saw.
    5. I have read all sorts of ways of truing up tenons but I have settled on using a router plane. I set it to a depth which makes the final width of the tenon tight. A few passes with the router plane brings all the tenons to a uniform thickness and ensures that they are parallel to the faces of the timber. Death to twisted tenons.
    6. I clean up the cheeks with a chisel giving them a slight undercut.
    7. Using a router to cut the mortises leaves rounded ends. After a lot of doing it one way and then the other, I have decided it is much easier to round over the end of the tenons than to square up the mortises. I use a bastard file and a second cut mill file for this. These cost me next to nothing from a local hardware store and work really well.
    8. Any final small adjustments to get a nice push fit are made with the mill file to take the last one billionth of an inch of the tenons if necessary.

    This process is fast, fun and easy for me. It works for me just fine. My Stanley no 71 plane I got at a flea market is just great to use and I do not know how I lived so long without it.

    Also I was very much encouraged to read this article by Derek Cohen. Especially his instructions about what to do if you accidently make the tenon too thin. I am glad to know that I am not the only one to whom this has occurred.
    http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furnitu...ndMortice.html
    My age is still less than my number of posts

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  3. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Brisbane (western suburbs)
    Age
    77
    Posts
    12,093

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by chook View Post
    .....6. I clean up the cheeks with a chisel giving them a slight undercut.......
    Typo, Chook? Did you mean 'shoulders'?

    Yairs, chopping a whole lot of mortises by hand is both a tedious & fraught occupation. Nothing worse than a slightly skewed mortise when making a door - twisted doors are an eyesore that is gauranteed to make you re-make the offending piece (DAMHIK!). Anything that helps with accuracy & speeds up the process can be welcome, so it's not surprising that many of us have sought more reliable (& easier!) solutions. For me, it's the hollow-chisel mortiser that I turn to.

    Quite a few years ago, when faced with a couple of jobs that entailed literally hunders of M&T joints, I invested in a small hollow-chisel mortiser. I'm dependant on the damn thing now - don't think I could trust myself to chop a straight mortise any more! The speed of set-up & the relative quietness of the hollow-chisel mortiser is much more to my liking than a screaming router. However, they are a one-trick tool, and so less appealing to those who prefer to invest in more versatile machinery.

    Even using machines, I still mark out each M&T. It doesn't take much time with a mortise gauge, and it is reassuring to have a reference to keep a check as I go. And while marking out a tenon from each side ensures a centred tenon, it's not a good practice overall. Using a mortice gauge (or any marking gauge) always from the face side, is safer, and ensures that surfaces fit properly in spite of small variations in stock thickness. This is more important with hand-thicknessed material, of course, but even machines can produce significant variation, especially if you have run the stock though on different occasions.

    Cheers,
    IW

  4. #3
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Brisbane
    Posts
    925

    Default

    I do mean shoulders. A small undercut seems to give a nicer fit. I have not had much of a shot at running a shoulder plane over them instead but I will definitely give it a go this weekend.

    I take your point about marking from one face side to ensure the two pieces line up. I get around this by ensuring the mortise is exactly centered in the timber also. (I did not put this step in the first post.) When I rout the mortise I set the bit as close to center as possible and rout the mortise twice. The first time I rout with the fence on one side of the timber then I turn the timber around and rout with the fence against the other side. That way the mortise must be exactly centered. This extra cut takes but a few seconds with the jig I have made. I can see that the procedure might lead to some issues but in the 30 or so I have cut this way since settling on the procedure I have outlined every mortise has turned out just right. You understand that in saying this I feel like a fool. I have seen some of your work and I am very hesitant to do other than to agree with whatever you say!

    A hollow chisel mortiser would be nice. Last year I spent lots of money getting a new set of hand tools, sharpening equipment and a drill press. This year my major purchase is a much bigger thicknesser, some improved dust extraction and a set of top end LN or Veritas chisels. Next year ..... You see how it goes. It will eb another few years and a bigger shed before a hollow chisel mortiser appears in the Chook Pen.

    By the way, did I say how much I like my little Stanley no 71? I should have got one 20 years ago.
    My age is still less than my number of posts

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