Modern Woodshop

I broke the process of cutting the mortises and dados for the nightstand carcasses into three steps:

1. Cut the top open-ended mortises on the legs using the router table.
2. Cut the dados for the side and bottom panels on the legs, rails, and stretchers using the router table.
3. Cut the remaining mortises on the legs using a handheld router.

This post will describe how I accomplished steps 1 and 2; my next post will detail step 3.

I used a 1/2″ straight bit in the router table to cut the top open-ended mortises on the legs.  I set my router fence and bit height by aligning the bit with the mortise’s layout lines.  I marked my fence with the exact width of the bit so I would know when I had reached the bottom of the mortise.

I cut each mortise in three passes, cutting a third of the waste away each pass and then raising the bit. Each leg has two top mortises on adjacent sides of the workpiece that intersect with each other.

When my witness mark on the leg reaches the mark on the fence indicating the edge of the bit, I stop advancing the workpiece and back it out.  I repeated this process for all 16 top mortises.

With the top mortises cut, I turned my attention to the dados that will house the side and bottom panels in each nightstand. I chucked a 1/4″ straight bit into the router, set the fence and bit height based on my layout lines for the dados, and I once again traced the width of the bit onto the fence.

I then cut the 10 dados in the legs, stopping the cut when my witness marks reached the edge of the bit.

I also cut the 20 dados in the rails and stretchers.  There was no need for witness marks in this case since the dados run the length of each workpiece.

Here are the rails and stretchers with all of the dados cut. In my next post, I’ll describe how I cut the remaining 24 mortises in the legs using a handheld router and my mortising jig.

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