Mortising update/nightmare

As previous posted I'm in the process of building my daughter a mission sofa table. To start, mortise & tenons look a lot easier when Norm does it. Anyway the side rails use through mortises, #1 mistake I used the measurement from the plans to mark the legs and rails with a pencil (bad idea) the up and down part of the mortises are longer then the tennon. After glueup I made little patches to stick in the lower part of the mortise. # 2 this follows Norms advice of measure twice cut ones. I glued up one table end two legs upper and lower short rails and vertical slats, so far so good. went to glue up the other table end and checked to see where the long (front back rails) mortise was (their offset mortises) and after the glue setup and took the clamps off I realized that the offset is to the outside on one table end and to the inside to the other table end. At this point I said a few bad words as I was kicking myself. What I did to fix it was to cut the tenon off one end of the rails and make new ones on the oposite side. During a trial assembly it didn't look to bad and was less then a 1/16 off from outside of legs to rails. # 3 I blew I think was $59. on the woodcraft tenoning jig and after using it for several of the tenons it worked ok I guess but kinda tedious. When I had to recut the tenons today I already had the stacked dado set in the tablesaw and just used it with a sacrificial fence and for me it did a much faster and better job of the tenons then the jig. (won't tell swmbo that). Well enough rambling, hope everyone had a great weekend.

Reply to
Mike S.
Loading thread data ...

Mike it does sound like you are having fun! Keep at it!

Reply to
Rumpty

I find the dado better in many cases also. I bought the jig before I had the dado and it did do a very good job. For a guide, I clamp a 1" piece to the fence just ahead of the blade.

OTOH, if you get into angled tenons, the fixture is going to work better than the dado.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in news:eB28d.6513$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:

I always find that it extremely useful to have multiple means of miscutting joinery. ;-)

Patriarch

Reply to
patriarch

Even better is to not measure it, then you can't get it wrong !

I blast my mortices through with whatever size hole the chisel makes. Then I set the bandsaw fence up to cut tenons to match the hole. They plug straight in.

I have a vague idea what size they are. But I don't waste time measuring this stuff, and it just doesn't matter if my morticer fence is a bit off (this is a hard adjustment to get accurate on my setup).

Measuring is for repeat work (and yes, I can drone one for hours about the work of Bramah, Whitworth, Colt and Cadillac). If you really are just making a one-off, then "standardisation" isn't a meaningful concept. Chase the thing that matters - fitting the two parts together _to_each_other_, not trying to match each of them to soem external standard.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

[snip]

Oh, you mean, "Measure once, curse twice."

Josie

Reply to
firstjois

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 04:48:37 GMT, patriarch calmly ranted:

That would be funny if it weren't so true.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 08:27:50 -0400, "firstjois" calmly ranted:

Dayam! That one's going up in my shop today. ;)

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Yeah, and it seems like I'm always coming up with new ones.

--RC

Reply to
Rick Cook

Rick Cook wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mindspring.com:

Isn't creativity one of the reasons we enjoy the hobby?

Reply to
patriarch

I like to cut all the tenons with my router table, then trace them on the part to be morticed, but otherwise I've had the same experience.

Agreed. I like to do each joint seperately, and then lightly number them with a pencil so that I know they match.

Reply to
Prometheus

I can generally interchange between those cut on the same project, on the same day. But my fence adjustments aren't repeatable enough to swap between projects.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

I suppose that is one of the advantages of a biesmeyer fence , I made a sled that rides on the top of the fence with a piece of wood attached to the side. then clamp the piece that you want to cut tenon on to it . set the fence and slide the sled through ,flip the workpiece and do the other side.....

then set the blade height, and using the mitre gauge cut the scrap off using a block against the set fence to ensure the correct cutoff length .Do not use the fence directly, else the cutoff will jam between the blade and fence .....mjh

Reply to
Mike Hide

The Uni-T-Fence slide-on replacement for my old Unifence, which makes it more 'beismeyer like' but with "t" slots for additional options, has been great for those fence riding jigs.

Reply to
Swingman

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.