Modern Woodshop

I rough cut my tenons with power tools, but I fit them to their mortises exclusively with hand tools.  I like the control that hand tools give me during this operation.

I started out with a rough cut tenon.  I cut this tenon on my table saw using the same technique demonstrated in my previous nightstand project post.  When I cut these tenons on the table saw, I ensure that the inside surface of this stretcher will be flush with the surface of the leg.  This is my reference face.  It’s required because I precut all the dados for the side and bottom panels for the nightstands, so using a reference face guarantees that those dados will all line up when I assemble the piece.  I’ll fit the tenon by trimming it’s opposite cheek.

As you can see, a tenon off the table saw is rectangular, while my mortises are all rounded.  Since fitting a square peg in a round hole isn’t feasible in our universe, my first step is to round over the corners of the tenon using a rasp.  When I do this, I’m very careful not to touch the shoulders of the tenon with the rasp.  The teeth on the rasp could cut into the shoulder and result in a joint with some unsightly gaps when all is said and done.  I only need to make a few strokes on each corner since the rasp cuts very quickly.  During the fitting process, if I find that the tenon is a bit too wide, I again use the rasp to take a smidge off each edge.

Keeping the rasp away from the shoulder of the tenon has a drawback:  the corners of the tenon up near the shoulder are still square.  I take care of those with a sharp chisel.  I use the chisel to shave away the excess material, and also to ensure that the tenon is rounded over all the way to the shoulder.

At this point in the process, I can start test fitting the joint.  I know it will be too tight because I purposely cut the tenon overly thick to give myself the opportunity to sneak up on a good fit.  I use my rabbet block plane to shave away material from the cheek of the tenon until the joint fits together perfectly.  You can also use a shoulder plan for this operation, but a standard block plane won’t work because it’s iron does not extend all the way through the side of the plane.  This feature on rabbet block planes and shoulder planes allows you to trim the cheek of the tenon all the way up to the shoulder.

This process is actually fast, easy, and results in a perfect joint.

In the picture above, you can see the tenon extending into the leg through an adjacent mortise.  The two tenons will be mitered together inside the leg.

Well, that’s one done… only 31 more to go!

To view the entire Nightstand Project series, please visit my project page.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I made a joinery overview post that explained my strategy for the tenons on the top aprons.  Each apron has a 1/2” wide by 1” long offset tenon that fits into an open mortise on the top of the leg.  Adjacent tenons are mitered together inside the leg.  The picture to the right gives you a view of one corner of the nightstand from above.

I like to rough cut my tenons slightly oversize and then fit them to their corresponding mortises using hand tools.  In this post, I’ll show you the process I used to rough cut all of the apron tenons.

The sketch above shows that the outside face of each apron has a 1/4” shoulder, the inside face has a 1/2” shoulder, and the top has no shoulder.  What is not shown is that the bottom of the apron also has a 1/4” shoulder.  So, my first step was to cut a shoulder that’s just a smidge less that 1/4” on three sides of the apron.  I’m undercutting the smaller shoulder just a bit to give myself some wiggle room later to fit the tenon by hand.

I clamped a stop block onto my table saw fence and positioned it to give me a 1” long tenon.  I also installed a saw blade with a flat tooth grind.  This is necessary to give a nice flat surface on the tenon.  If I used a saw blade with an ATB grind, I would end up with a sawtooth-shaped pattern on the tenon cheeks that would significantly reduce the amount of surface area for the glue to bond.  The blade is raised slightly less than 1/4”.  Supporting the work-piece with the miter gauge, I position it against the stop block and make three shoulder cuts.  Remember that the top of the apron will be flush with the top of the leg, so a shoulder cut is not necessary on that surface.  The stop block ensures that the shoulder cuts are all in the same plane on the apron.  Shoulders that don’t match up don’t look very good on a finished piece of furniture.  The two pictures below show the final shoulder cuts from the top and the bottom of the work-piece.

Now that the shoulders are defined, I cut away some of the waste.  Using the same exact table saw setup, I nibbled away the waste on three sides of the apron, which gave me a wide tenon that is centered on the work-piece.

We’re done, right?  Wrong!  Holding the tenon up against it’s mortise shows  you that I still have a little bit of work to do.  The tenon is clearly too wide for the mortise, but this was expected.  You can see that I need to clear away some additional waste on the inside face of the work-piece.  This cut requires some precision.  I purposely undercut the 1/4” shoulder on the outside face of the apron so I can tweak that cheek of the tenon to get a nice fit in the mortise.  It is critical, however, that I cut the inside cheek precisely so that the dados that I cut in the legs and the aprons line up properly to accept the side and back panels of the nightstand.  I used a combination square on the mortise to get the exact depth of the inside shoulder and then used that square to set the height of my table saw blade.  After doing a few test cuts to ensure that the blade was at the correct height, I cut away the remaining waste on the tenon.

And the end result of all this measuring, nibbling, and cutting is a nice clean offset tenon.  Now I just have to repeat this procedure 15 more times.  In my next post, I’ll break out some basic hand tools and show you how I tweak the tenon to get a perfect fit in the mortise.

To view the entire Nightstand Project series, please visit my project page.