I spent tons of time on my neander-project, a cherry end table with hand-cut mortise and tenon joints... slaved over a chisel for hours on end, had to remake two legs due to screwupery, endlessly fiddled with tenons trying to make them fit decently, and finally glued it up, racked it into square (I thought), and ran off to do my new years partying (read: sitting on the couch).
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come back to my project after the festivities, declamp, and lo, my beautiful table is 1/2" out of square on the diagonals! How can this be, I cry, and give it a gentle push on the long diagonals. CRAAACK!! and three of my beautiful mortises tear out, and now my table is floppy.
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now that I've surpressed my crying jags, I have time to reflect that perhaps the mortises should have been located 3/8" inland, and my tenons could just be rabbets, and still look the same from the outside, but be a lot stronger. As for it not being square after the clamp-up, I dont know if I didnt measure accurately enough, or just my bad luck, or what. As for where to go now? I'm hoping I can slather those cracks up with glue and clamp them, and aside from some ugly scars, be good as new. Who knows?
Happy New Year, friends :)
-Ian