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.
- posted
19 years ago