Thread: Nibbling the shoulder but not the cheek

My guess is that when the blade is 30-40mm high for the cheek cuts, the slightest wrong movement can end up taking a lot more timber out than you want.

Pardon the Imperial but I am not one with metric.

A miter gauge and the fence is a perfect way to cut the shoulders. Just subtract 1/8 inch from the length of the tenon on the fence setting. This takes care of the width of the kerf of the blade.

If you're working with 3/4 inch timber and 3/8 inch thick tenons, raise the blade 3/16 inch plus a skosh. Set your fence to the tenon length less 1/8 inch. Cut the shoulders on all four sides of the timber.

The shoulders are done.

Put the two outside blades of your dado set in the saw. Put spacers between the two blades to give you a 3/8 inch gap between the blades.

(FYI - The 'set' of the teeth is usually about 1/64 inch. The 1/8 inch steel bar stock that you buy at the hardware store is probably a 1/8 inch METRIC or 0.120 inch thick. Use three pieces of bar stock, a 0.030 inch brass sheet stock to compensate for the blade set and three 0.005 inch brass sheet stock to make the metric bar stock imperial. DAMHIKT)

This gives a 3/8 inch spacing between the outside dado blades.

Use your tenon jig to cut tenons.

BTW - A shop built tenon jig that slides along the fence (Biesemeyer type) is far superior to a dedicated tenon jig that use the miter slot. DAMHIKT

Set the side of the fence mounted tenon jig 3/16 inch from the inside of the blade. (1/8 kerf plus 1/16 clearance for a centered tenon.)

Set the height of the cut to the length of the tenon less a big skosh. You've already cut the shoulders and don't need to cut the tenon into the shoulders.

Clamp your timber to the tenon jig and cut your tenons.

One other very painful bit of information. You can NOT use wood as spacer material. The wood will compress, a nut on threads does not exert equal pressure about it's circumference and the dado blades will be slanted. DAMHIKT

Finally, Serge this has been submitted to all the woodworking magazines, however you're welcome to submit this to the French language magazines.

If you mean after making the cuts that define the shoulder then make a further series of cuts to make the cheek face then nothing wrong at all it just takes quite a few passes with a normal blade. Thats where a dado can save some time. I used to just do a few cuts then pare down to the cuts with a chisel. Plenty of ways to cut tenons but if you have lots to do in 1 batch then you will be looking to save time. A bandsaw also does a good job on them if you can get it set up with no drift.
Regards
John

My choice for the dual blade setup was to insure consistency of tenon thickness. I'm using a router bit to cut the mortises.