# Loose tenon thickness -- your 2 cents



## Furnitude (Oct 18, 2008)

I'm making a table out of walnut (but oak and cherry in the future) that will have 1/2" thick stretchers and I'm going to use loose tenons. (they will extend about 5/8" into the legs and the stretchers.) I'm thinking of making the tenons 3/16" thick, going with the 1/3 thickness rule. There will be double tenons, but i'm worried that 1) the tenons will be so thin that they could break if there's any wracking force and 2) the tenons, if I made them any thicker (say, 1/4" thick), would blow out the sides of the stretcher with wracking. To complicate matters, the stretchers will be at about a 45 degree angle to the legs. The below drawing is just a sketch and isn't proportional…










I'm afraid I'm thinking this to death and should probably just make them. But I'd appreciate any wisdom…
Thanks,
Mitch


----------



## CanadianWoodChuck (Sep 8, 2007)

In my humble opinion …. I believe that any loose tenon that is a nice tight fit becomes part of the wood and so any structure that you loose making the mortise you replace with the tenon. I don't think this is an issue. Bruce


----------



## BTimmons (Aug 6, 2011)

Being on the inexperienced side myself, if faced with the same problem, I would probably build a mockup of that joint and subject it to stress testing.


----------



## Fuzzy (Jun 25, 2007)

Possibly drill a 3/8" hole right between the tenons … counterbore it to accommodate a properly sized screw … assemble the joint using both the tenons and said screw … cut a face grain plug to fill the hole … trim flush ???

The plug will be in a low visibility area, and, if done correctly would be totally invisible.


----------



## HorizontalMike (Jun 3, 2010)

I love loose tenons and even made a router based horizontal mortising machine to make most of my joinery. That said, from your drawing, I would recommend a spline type tongue and groove. On the style, cut a 90-degree mortise, and on the diagonal I would a full spline at the desired angle.

A chisel can square off the bottom AND top of the spline to make it square with the mortise hole, top and bottom. I think that that would be easier than the floating tenon since you may not have a horizontal mortising machine like mine. I can actually set the bed/piece at 45-degrees and pull this off pretty easily, but not so much with a more traditional mortiser.
Just my 2-cents…


----------



## waho6o9 (May 6, 2011)

Titebond lll glue and you're good to go Mitch.


----------



## renners (Apr 9, 2010)

I would do it like this with a loose tenon









It's easy to make a table to hold a router horizontally, it doesn't need to have all the bells and whistles (though that would be nice)


----------

