A new dining room set for my wife! #8: Sides again - Time to put on my APRON and get back to work.

On to the side aprons!

After thinking about it for a while I figured that cutting the shoulders would be best since it gives me something to cut to. Somewhere I should cut no further, and the material would fall off when I was done.

Before I start I make sure that all the pieces are the exact same length. I do this because I’ll use a stop on the fence and I will know that everything will end up in the same place.

I also looked at all the parts and decided which surface would look best facing out, and made a mark.

The blade was set to 8 degrees, the same as the tenons will be cut at. You can see that I like to sneak up to the line.

Then I set the fence to the other side of the blade. I reset the stop and the depth and cut the other side.

Then I proceeded with the cheek cut to one side of the tenon on each end of the part. I really had to be careful here. I double checked that every piece was in the jig in the correct orientation. With these angled tenons you really need to be careful.

Usually with straight tenons you just cut one side and then flip the part over and cut again. This will center the tenon so you don’t really give it much thought. The problem with that is if the thickness the part varies so will the tenon.

Angled tenon are different. Both sides are cut with the same setup. You can see from the picture that I added a spacer. This was because the blade would have hit the jig. Since I reference the same side of the part all the tenons will be exactly the same size.

You can probably see that tenon was made long so one side isn’t cut all the way. This doesn’t matter because I will cut a 45 on the end of the tenon. This will allow me to keep the tenon as long as I can. Since each leg has two mortises, the tenons would interfere with each other. Cutting a 45 on both of them fixes this. More about it later.

You can see in the picture that I left some material on what will be the short side, leaving the tenon a little thick. This is so that I can use a rabbet plane to fit the tenon perfectly to the mortise. With all the wear and tear a chair takes I want things to fit as best as I can make them.

Then with the blade set back to 90 degrees and the fence set to 8 degrees I cut the shoulder cuts on the ends.
After one side was done I rotated the fence 8 degrees on the other side of 90 to cut the other side.

Then I removed the material on the bandsaw. I set up a stop block so I would cut too deeply.

Well, here they are all done. Not really that hard. You just need to be careful. I took it real slow.

Next I will add 2 mortises to each back leg.

-- Gary - Never pass up the opportunity to make a mistake look like you planned it that way - Tyler, TX