But I Don't Have A Domino - Loose Mortise and Tenon Joints

[Marc] The Wood Whisperer is sponsored by Powermatic and Titebond. Back in 2007 Festool introduced the domino. I thought it was a game changer, but every time I used it on the show the reaction was ahh (crowd booing) Festool sucks(crowd booing) Like that (crowd booing) you suck (Crying in a german accent) boo hoo hoo why don't zhey love me? (funny tongue sounds) So even though the tool was incredibly handy and made quick work of mortise and tenon joints it was expensive and maybe it was too easy. A lot of times in any craft or hobby something that makes the job to easy tends to be looked down upon by purest. So over the years I really haven’t used it much and certainly not as much as I wanted too. Now fast forward to 2019 and people are a little bit more excepting of seeing the domino in videos. But a lot of people still sorta shut down when they see it. They assume that if they don’t have a domino they can’t do that project or they can't learn anything from that project. And it really could’t be further from truth. All right now this project here is the Hank Chair. The design is by Jory Bringham. I’m building one to kinda help with the teaching process in the Guild. This project is full of angles and bevels and things that have to be joined together. That really make the domino excel for this application and that's what Jory uses to build his. So I took it upon myself to try to build it with a classic slip tenon or loose mortise and tenon joint using a router. And that's the basis of what I’m going to show you here today, are the various types of joints you can make as a substitute for the domino. Now before we get into the specifics there are three sorta rules or three steps to this process that are the same no matter what joint your gonna do. First is layout you essentially wanna transfer reference lines from one piece to the next. And that helps us do our layout for the joinery so on this guy, I have a center line here along the width and a center line on the thickness. You position the parts in the final orientation you can even clamp them together so they don’t move and then transfer your marks to the adjoining piece. You can then use these lines to layout the mortise so you just kinda wrap that center line around to the joinery face. And then take the thickness center line and then strike that all the way through. We know that's the center point of our bit and then we can just measure out an equal distance from our center line. to get our mortise and this way we mark that on both pieces its gonna be the exactly the same when we route them. Step two is to position your router and make the cut. Now usually I use an edge guide to get the job done we're gonna reference on the same face on both of our pieces and keep that consistent and will use the layout lines to line up our bit. Now sometimes in a piece, you know a case like this we’ve got a piece that's very small hard to balance a router there. So we will very frequently make use of extensions. And these can just be from scrap 2X4’s or plywood. Just to give us more room for the router and make it a lot safer and more stable of a cut. And step three is to make your tenon stock. Really if you can mill a board you can make a tenon and it's just a very thin board. I like to run it through the plainer. get it to the exact thickness that I need so it’s a nice slip fit. And then just to dress it up a little bit I’ll round over the edges. Not totally necessary but if I have a rounded mortise and I got a router table set up I may as well just router those and then they look really nice. [Marc] So let's start with the basic 90 degree joint I mark the center of the joint across both pieces and then mark out a half-inch in each direction for the one inch mortise. For the first piece will extend the lines to the joinery face and then rough in the lines for the actual mortise width. With the workpiece sandwiched between two pieces of plywood. I’ll line up the router bit and lock down the edge guide. Even if the bit isn’t dead center that's ok. We're gonna lock in this setting and will use it again on the adjoining workpiece (light sounds from power tool) Now for the adjoining piece we’ll repeat the layout process. Because the router is already set up we only need start and stop points. For this one, you could really see how important these supplemental guides are just makes sure the guides are always perfectly flush with the joint surface. And don’t worry too much if those start and stop points aren’t dead on. If you go over the line slightly that will just allow for a little bit side to side play during the glue-up. Which can actually be helpful. With the correct size tenon inserted the joint comes together Next, let's do a miter joint. in this case, both pieces are mitered. I’ll start by marking the center line and the mortise length across both pieces. The layout is then done on the joinery face. Even though the piece is mitered It makes no difference when attaching the rails. Just make sure their flush with the joinery face. The adjoining piece is a little more awkward. But still totally doable. Once again the joint comes together perfectly. (tapping) Now let's look at the bevel joint. This is a dining chair where the side rail meets the back leg. at 17 degrees. The end of the work piece is cut with a 17 degree bevel at the table saw. Now without changing the settings on the saw I rip a piece of scrap with that same bevel angle on the edge. Now I can clamp that beveled piece to the rail piece. Making sure that the bevels line up in a single plane. From there I can use the router to make the mortises. Notice how I have it angled to allow gravity to work in my favor. The mortise and the leg piece is pretty simple so let's jump right to the assembly. This chair has lots of other angles but all of the joints are made the same way. The final example is a compound joint that has both a miter and a bevel. Which is the case for the arm to back joint of the Hank Chair. The pieces are tricky to hold into position so I’ll do my layout using measurements. The rest of the layout will be done directly on the joint faces. Just like on the bevel version we need a support block. So I’ll cut a piece to the same bevel angle as the workpiece. The miter angle here doesn’t actually play into the set up at all. Now this gets us really close But it would be helpful if the edge guide had a nice square corner to ride against. So we can use the same setup at the saw again to dog-ear the corner. I’ll use blue tape and CA Glue to attach the guide and we’ll do the routing with the workpiece nice and flat. Once again were letting gravity help us by putting the edge guide on the high side. (tape ripping) The back piece actually only has a bevel so we can use the same support block to help us with the routing. The joint goes right together. (very light sounds) Ahhh yeah! So hopefully this gives you the toolset you need so that when you see the domino being used you don’t have to be of those people who says but I don’t have a Domino. There’s always another way to get the job done. Now if you're interested in this Hank Chair this is available in the Guild. Videos are currently rolling out You’ll see Jory’s methods using the domino And then my methods using loose mortise and tenon construction and the router. I should also mention that I released a book on joinery this year called Essential Joinery and you can get that at essentialjoinery.com if you want an autographed copy or Amazon.com If you want the best price. All right thanks for watching everyone see you later. (silence)

Channel: The Wood Whisperer

Views: 144,426

Rating: 4.9158635 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, diy, furniture, Festool Domino, Domino Alternative, Domino Alternatives, How to make loose mortise and tenon joints, mortise and tenon, router mortises, domino alternatives, slip tenons, floating mortise and tenon joint

Id: ws1D23zzCVc

Length: 7min 15sec (435 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2019