Entertainment Center #5: Moving On - Mortise and Tenon

I typically use 3/8” mortises, but 1/4” will work fine. Don’t worry about the color match. It won’t bother anyone else but you. LOL. It just provides contrast. The tenoning jig looks hot! Sorry again about the fingers.

Looking forward to seeing how this progresses!

-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)

The rules that I’ve seen are 1/3 on each surface. 1/3 wood, 1/3 mortise, and 1/3 wood.

If you were making a workbench then the Tenon would be chunkier but I wouldn’t have the same width legs as I had aprons.

It’s like your picture the mortise is back from the edge so that the apron is not an even match to the edge.

-- What happens in the workshop stays in the workshop. No wait that doesn't sound right. Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †

Dan A trick I learned in a class I took on number legs is like this.

You put the legs together to get the match you want. Then you fit the aprons into the mortise in each leg and you label the ends as 8 and 1 for the front apron 2 and 3 for the right side 4 and 5 for the back and 6 and 7 for the left side.

That way you can put them back to the corner that you fit them to.

It saves problems at assembly and glue up time.

-- What happens in the workshop stays in the workshop. No wait that doesn't sound right. Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †

Karson, I like the numbering idea better than my layout lines in the picture. Also, yes there will be a 1/4 inch reveal between the legs and the rails so the mortises are 1/2 inch back from the edges.

One thing I did was to layout the mortises at each corner but I had a hard time using pencil on red oak so I placed masking tape over the legs and then used a sharpie marker. Anything better than that idea?

-- Dan in Central Oklahoma, Able to turn good wood into saw dust in the blink of an eye!

I usually draw the end lines across the leg so it is easier to see. I don’t bother doing the up and down lines because where i cut the mortise could be a trial and error allignment using maple, or popular or some scrap or a steel rule to get the offset from the edge.

The stop and start lines are critical because thats where you would do the cuts with the Mortise machine.

But yes the tape would work. A sharpie might be too wide a line for close cuts. They also use a marking knife where the wood fibers are cut and so then they are easier to be seen.

Here are my lines on the buffet hutch that I’m making. I wouldn’t normally make the lines down the legs, but these are panel cuts that start and stop at the apron pieces. So i was trying to get the perspective.

The plywood boards are my story sticks where I’m showing all of the cutting on each of the 4 legs, because they are different for the front and rear legs.

-- What happens in the workshop stays in the workshop. No wait that doesn't sound right. Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †

I second the call for the 1/3 rule. If you were doing 7/8” stock you could bump it up. At some point there would be little material left if the mortise were enlarged.

-- -John "Do I have to keep typing a smiley? Just assume it's a joke." www.flickr.com/photos/gizmodyne

Most of the strength of the joint is coming from the glue surface, which is not changing with thickness of tenon. Obviously a paper thin tenon is not desirable but yours are fine.

-- -John "Do I have to keep typing a smiley? Just assume it's a joke." www.flickr.com/photos/gizmodyne

Karson,

Story boards are a fairly recent discovery of mine. I understand the concept but need to see how they are truly executed. I have seen them referenced in cabinet making and never thought about them for this project. Thanks for the reminder.

-- Dan in Central Oklahoma, Able to turn good wood into saw dust in the blink of an eye!