Thread: Smooth tenons?

The joint should be snug enough so that it just slides together with a mallet, this will give plenty of room for glue, in days gone buy they did not use glue in a motice and tenon they used wedges or pins nothing such as "glue" to cover up for a bad joint.

I only use sholder power, rocking back and forth, to seat a tenon home. Anything else is too tight for me. A good looking thru tenon is hard to master.

Originally Posted by Ball Peen

I only use sholder power, rocking back and forth, to seat a tenon home. Anything else is too tight for me. A good looking thru tenon is hard to master.

It is and they are. I cut the mortice with a router using a simple jig I made and spiral upcut bits. Much as I enjoy doing things with hand tools rather than machinery I have never been able to enjoy bashing out mortices when I have a perfectly good router sitting on the shelf. The tenons, I cut by hand with some Veritas saws. I now have a Stanley router plane to trim them to an exact fit. I was using either a rebate plane or a chisel or even some 80 grit sandpaper glued onto 9 mm MDF backing. The difference between a tenon which is too tight and one that is too lose is very small and like you I like to be able to push the joint together.

In recent weeks I have done plenty of them and I have got it to a pretty good art. But my question remains. If dowels have flutes wouldn't it be better to put some sort of flutes on tenons.

Hi Chook,

There's a thread on the glue section about tight fitting / loose fitting joints and what glue works.

I found it very interesting as I was also concerned about forcing the glue out in a tight joint. Apparently a tight joint is good.

I can't remember which one it was but this doc was linked to it.


Cheers

Bryan

The flutes on dowels allow the dowel to let glue escape and not cause a hydraulic force with liquid glue that pushes the dowel back out of the hole. They are not there to make a better glue line. A tight fitting m&t joint (not too tight but firm) either sawed or smooth works well and has worked fine as long as glued m&ts have been around. A single scored line down both faces of the tennon will let the pressure out if there is a problem. It is best to apply glue to the sides of the tennon but dont make a puddle in the bottom of the mortice.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by orraloon

The flutes on dowels allow the dowel to let glue escape and not cause a hydraulic force with liquid glue that pushes the dowel back out of the hole. They are not there to make a better glue line. A tight fitting m&t joint (not too tight but firm) either sawed or smooth works well and has worked fine as long as glued m&ts have been around. A single scored line down both faces of the tennon will let the pressure out if there is a problem. It is best to apply glue to the sides of the tennon but dont make a puddle in the bottom of the mortice.
Regards
John

That makes sense.