How to cut a MORTICE AND TENON JOINT by HAND

oh yes hello everyone in this video I'm gonna be showing you I need to stop flipping timber around how to construct how to cut a mortise and tenon joint entirely by hand no machines whatsoever so let's get going so of course starting with our two blank bits of timber let's get in close and see what tools we need for this right tools we need for this joints a mortise gage a marking gauge the marking knife a mortise chisel a mallet a wider chisel Buddha pen more on that later a square and a rip tenon saw and tomatoes joint a little bit easy you can also get crosscut saw to cut the cheeks off the tenon and for actually refining the tenon two tools that you could get here are also router plane or you could get a shoulder plane those will help you out a little bit but not completely necessary I will show you how to use those later on so let's get in close and Mark these out right let's get the rubbish out of the way okay right so we've also got the two components here and these are different thicknesses as you may see here so we've got a bit of beech which we're going to be cutting the mortise into so the mortise is the part with the hole in it and on this bit of ash here we're going to be cutting the tenon so the first thing we're going to do here is mark our face sides and face edges and because these are different thicknesses what's important to note here is whatever side we put our face side on that is going to be ending up flush so if we put the face side on here it means that the components going to sit flush on that side whereas if we put our face side on the back we're gonna get a small step here on the front so depending on what you're doing you might want that joint to be flush at the front say if this was a door for example a frame and panel door in most cases you want that frame to be completely flush and the panel in the middle inset whereas if this was a support for the other side of a chair for example and this was the leg sometimes you want that little step there because it provides a nice little shadow and sort of a little bit of visual interest to it so before you mark that face light and face let's just work out which size you actually want to be flushed for me because there's no real way that this goes round I'm just going to draw it on the front here so Buddha pen face side and face edge now that Jesus pen ran out I've used it far too much he is gone now on a side note I have found a supplier for these in the u.s. I have ordered 50 of them to come to my house so if you want one I have a link up here going to my website where you can preorder one for mid-december directly from my store it's late at night when I did it I definitely was not thinking straight but if you want a Jesus pen you can now get one that it's for people in the UK and Europe only however if you're in the u.s. there is also a little link on that page which you can buy them through Amazon and I get a small cut of that as well so if you want one buy one from me or through the affiliate link would be absolutely amazing the bit of hem was given to me by one of my viewers and who also comes into Axminster tools in Basingstoke quite a lot absolutely brilliant I really love it but anyway we are cutting a mortise and tenon in this video I'm not talking about pens because I'm not a pen salesman so face side face edges marked out so now we know that when this joint goes together this face is going to be flush because that's where our face ideas and I'm not going to be able to assemble this component that way because the face side is on the inside here it's not correct we want the face sides and the face edges to be on the outside edges because then you can see them with your face or at least that's how I like to think about it so next we're going to get a square and we're going to mark the shoulders on the tenon here now I've said this a lot in previous videos what's important is that we reference the square the stock of the square off either the face side or the face edge so you can get access to all four sides by using those two edges so like that like that like that and like that so we're going to square a line all the way around here to mark that shoulder line so because this component is going into here we're just going to work out how far we can go to start with so I reckon I'm going to leave about 20 millimeters at the end so this component is 17 mil that means that my tenon is going to be about 50 millimetres long so I'm going to measure 50 millimetres back from there put a small knife mark and then we're going to start squaring that line round so stock up the square against the face edge here I'm going to put the knife in that little mark I just did and then slide the square up to it and do a light drag back just to establish that line don't dig it in at this point just establish that line and then once you're getting a nice straight cut that's when you can start digging it in and make a nice crisp line like that so now we're gonna go around the other side so again stock against the face side here get the knife in that edge roll it over again we've got our face edge here so again knife in there drag back this side here don't reference it off there because that's not where our face ideas want to be referencing it off this side here so stock against that establish that line and then dig in okay and if you take your time with that that's going to give you a nice crisp line all the way around and when we offer that up to this component and see that that is how far it's going to go in and we are left with about 20 millimeters at the end so next what we're gonna do is Mark out the mortises on here so in order to get maximum strength from this mortise and tenon what you want to be doing in most cases if you're centralizing the tenon on this component is dividing this component by three now it's very easy to think divide that by three and then draw my marking gauge lines all the way around but this will prevent problems later when it comes to chopping out the mortise by hand because when we're chopping out the mortise that tenon that you've left in the middle may not be the same width as your mortise chisel here so what you actually want to be doing here is finding a mortise chisel that is very close to this component divided by three so in this case it's about eight millimeters so what I've done here is on that shoulder line I'm just gonna find the halfway point thirteen on there and then I'm going to get my mortise chisel lay it down very carefully centralize it on that mark so it's sitting dead center in the timber and it simply puts a little mark on the left hand so the chisel and a little mark on the right side off the chisel and then what I can do is get my mortise gage and set it up so that the two heads are hitting both of those outer marks so if you're getting close you can see what this looks like so what you can see here is the three marks so that one in the middle is my original halfway point and then if I lay a chisel on that you can see that those two outer marks are the same width as the chisel so with the mortise cage now referencing off my face side which is this side you can see that I've set it up so that one of them is hitting that far point and this other one is hitting that close point and you'll notice that the champers on the cutting head so those little 45-degree slopes they are sloping into the waist here it's again on the far side you can see the cutting head sloping into the waist and on this close one the 45 is also sloping into the waist so now with those firmly locked down I can start squaring this round at the end of the timber now if you have this mark engaged by Veritas this the dual marking gauge be sure to grab yourself a shaft clamp that basically clamps both of these shafts together but allows them to still move in and out of this headstock here it means that you can keep this exact distance between the heads but change the offset from the stock here I still haven't got around to buying one but I definitely need to in reality I do think this tool should come with one but as now it's just an extra selling point Veritas in it so with these two heads don't be tempted to push them both in at the same time focus on using them one at a time so I'm going to use the far side to start with really press the stock into the edge of the timber here focus more on pressing into that then you are pressing down make sure this line is really accurate so light pressure then gradually increase it that one's established now roll it round and do this other side say like pressure and then start digging in a bit now down the end grain exactly the same still referencing off the face side so with these it's usually easier to do the far side one because the 45 degrees on that cutting head helps pull the stock into the edge of the timber whereas on this one closest you the 45 degrees is kind of starting to push it away a bit so really make sure that you are pressing that stock into the edge of the timber okay now we're gonna do the opposite side so I'll make it easier if you'd see it'll flip it round but off see face side is now here alright so that's spread all the way around and now we can just mark our waist make sure we know that we are removing these rather than at the middle so next we're going to just mark out the mortise component so this is our outside face that means the mortise is going on this face here and when I assemble this joint once again I want these faces to be flush here so I'm going to be referencing off our face side to make this a little bit neater to make sure I don't go too far down to that mark engage it's gonna pop the other component on there get it flush on the top and just give myself a little line so that I know I don't need to mark any further below that so referencing off the face side so now there's our mortise lines down the front and what we've got to do now is put a little mark on the end grain here for the haunch and what the haunch does on top is it gives the tenon more surface area top to bottom it means that that components a lot more secure in that so if you look at the top of a frame and panel door for example once the tenon component goes into the mortise you might see there's a little nub on the end of the ten which is fitting into a groove if it was constructed with traditional mortise and Tenon's that will be the haunch and then below that will be the main tenant so in terms of how deep to make this horch if this was a frame and panel door you want to make that hunch about as deep as the panel goes into the frame so usually for my work that's around five or six mil so around a quarter of an inch so you can do this with a square and knife I generally just do it with a marking gauge so five millimeters deep just put a light scratch in there now I can get our mortise gage and continue scratching the lines down to hit that marking gauge line we've got here so still referencing off the face side roll it down and this other one roll it down and hit it so now to mark out how far down we want that hole to go usually I do this so it's about the third of the height of the tenon because if that Horch was any smaller and this tenon sort of took up I don't know about three quarters and that component as it goes into the mortise it means that we're going to have lots of short grain in this area here which if the tenon was twisted back it might end up punching up the end grain in this area here so if I set it down about a third of the way it means that this end grain still has a lot of support from underneath again it's very hard to explain you just got to sort of bear with me here and you'll see it all come together at the end you'll be like oh I get it so you can either mark its distance down with a ruler or a pen I'm going to do it with another marking gauge haven't changed the settings on my other two I'm going to leave them exactly as it is because if I'm doing more mortise and Tenon's around a frame for example I want these to be exactly the same so this tenon component is say about 60 millimetres to a third of that is obviously 20 this marking gauge here is from Veritas it has metric graduations on the side I did a tool jewel between this marking gauge and the type mark marking gauge so if you're interested in that the link is up here for that ago that has locked off at 20 and I'm referencing off the face edge which is going to be on the top of this component here I'm going to mark all the way back like this so like pressure and increase it around the end grain and on the far side here and then on the mortise component because they're referencing flush on the top like that if I flip them up you might be able to see the line on the tenon there means that I need to reference the marking gauge off of here on the mortise then just drag that back so now I know on this wall its component that area there is going to be my mortise and that area there is going to be my Horch the only thing he wants to do now is mark a little shoulder to go on the bottom of this tenon so there's no possibility of the mortise showing through when we assemble this component on the bottom here if we set that mortise back three millimeters or so it means that it's not going to show up once this component is assembled so I've ran out of marking gauges now just going to do this with a ruler so this component here is 58 millimeters thick so I'm going to mark it down 55 millimeters little line there grab a square do it from the face side and then just square that up and that is where I want my mortise to end now I can simply get the other component on there get it flush at the top get this haunch line lined up on each component put a little mark in line with where I've just drawn on the mortise and then square that line across using a knife I'm going to use a pen for this because I can't fit in the camera shop because it's just easier for you to see so there we go with that line along the end grain I can simply square that down the faces as well it's much more accurate to do this with a marking gauge so if you have more of them knocking around definitely score this line all the way around and then score it along here as well but like I say I've ran out of them now so I'm just going to use a pen for it but just make sure that you are marking out very accurately okay now before we start chopping anything out we've got one more bit to mark on the tenon here and that is the haunch on the end here now like I said on here this is going in six millimeters in this case what I tend to do here is Mark this horns to be a little bit larger that needs to be and we can chop it down later on so I'm going to mark this to be seven millimeters and then square that across so I'll see that's a lot of marking outs taken so what I'm going to do is draw over all of the lines I have knifed on here and we're going to get in close and I'm just going to go over again what we've done okay so what you can see here this is the side profile of the tenon so you can see this part here is the main tenant that is the haunch going up which we are going to be able to see on the end grapes that obviously serves a function and it gives it a nice old traditional look as well when the tenon on the bottom here it doesn't quite go to the bottom of the component and that means when we assemble the joint that little shoulder there is going to hide the bottom of the mortise and looking at the mortise itself you can see that this part here is going to be chopped to the full depth so 50 millimeters and that is to accept the tenon here and then this area here is going to be chops to five or six millimeters deep depending on if you're doing a frame and panel door or something for example and that is going to accept the little haunch on at the top of the tenon here but like say on the end of here we have marked six millimeters down and on the end of here we have marked seven millimeters down so this haunch isn't going to quite fit in there it means that we can trim this down a little bit later and obviously when we put the components together and reference our face sides off one another you can see that they line up like that so this face side is going to be flush and this is going to have a small step on it so it takes a lot of visualization it will really benefit if you have lots of marking gauges I've only got to to work from plus the mortise gage so most of you'll be needing to use a pen or pencil for this just make sure that you're marking out very accurately with it a knife is a lot more precise a pen or pencil gives you a much wider line so you've got to get that bang on the money so let's start chopping out the mortise I reckon so in my previous videos on hand cut joints I said that when you'll choose me down into something you always want to be standing so you can see if the chisel is going in squaring up now this is the case for most joints however a mortise and tenon what you actually want to be doing is looking down the waters to see if the chisel is going in square this way this dimension doesn't really matter too much because when it comes to putting the tenon in we can tweak it and the shoulder lines on this tenon are going to square that up anyway whereas if we chisel it into here out of square there's not as much surface area and it might start kinking that turning out left or right and result on a gap on one side enjoy so when your chisel in this site down the length of the mortise make sure the chisel is going a square this way I'm going to clamp it up between my dog's here and I'm going to be standing this way looking down the length of it like that so let's go so another point worth mentioning here is when I want this between the dogs I had the choice of putting the mortise this end to chop out or flip it round and have it this end to chop out and this is where I want to talk a little bit about energy transfer of a mallet and chisel to wood if I'm without this component here with the only support under the component being this sort of sliding dog block here I'm going to lose a lot of energy transfer as I'm whacking this chisel into it because there's nothing solid beneath that supporting it whereas if I flip this round and have that mortise supported by the solid workbench below that and even better you might be had to sit in the edge of the shot here this is the through tenon that the leg is supported by underneath that area there is so much more solid than this area here so when you're chopping up this more yes see if you can clamp it in a location that is above or near one of the legs on your workbench because the difference will be massive working above here will be like working on an anvil working here will be like working on a marshmallow give it a go I guarantee every time you're chopping into a component you will know it's the difference so let's get in closer and you can see what I'm doing now okay so when chopping out this mortise what I'm going to do is preserve this line here where the haunch starts or ends whatever way and this line here where the mortar sends to preserve those till the very end I'm just gonna remove all of this material to start with and then chop down to those at the final stage so I'm going to get my mortise chisel perfectly between those lines make sure it's not overhanging whatsoever I'm gonna start it about two or three millimeters away from that haunch I'm gonna stand here and I'm gonna give it a firm whack so you might have seen there how the mortise chisel was compressed back into that shoulder line but because I gave it two or three millimeters that line is still there so now what I'm going to do is flip the chisel round and the bevel on this is now going to push the material into that waste area there make sure that you're hitting in square honestly and give it a whack there we go and then move back you really can do massive steps of this so don't worry about being too too gentle about it okay so now when you're approaching the bottom here leave quite a bit of material there because what we can do is we can pop the chisel in there and use that material as leverage to remove all of this rubbish from inside the mortise if I chop to that final line and I start leaving off of that with a chisel it's gonna start bruising it so leave yourself lots of material there and just work it out like that okay so we've pretty much removed all that out let's go again and continue chopping so not quite in that haunch line so that's push the material back into the waste area and now I can flip the chisel around again at the end edged in there now I can leave her out again so you might have to see on here that all this leave ring really is damaging this back edge here that's why I've left a lot of material there okay so we're about to start the next lot of chopping now and what I've done is stuck a little bit of tape on here which is 50 millimeters from the edge of the blade and that is the depth that our tenon is going to be here so I'm using that takes as a depth stop as you get to the bottom it is pretty difficult to start removing this waste so maybe just get the chisel in there sort of stab it a few times break up some of that waste okay so now most of that cavity is established and now we can stand at the side of it and we can check to see if we are chopping down square to chop to those final lines so I can still see I've got a little bit at the pen line there but that's quite a big chop to do so I'm gonna remove some of this waste first now I can chisel in what's remaining because that's very thin end grain in there it's quite easy to break that up in there and try and avoid to use this area to lever it out and also this area because this area is short grain and this area here you might start bruising it below where that tenon shoulder is gonna hide so just be gentle with it here okay so a quick sitrep as to where we are with this this is why we chopped the mortise before the tenon because inevitably you're going to bruise these edges here and the top of the mortise is going to end up a little bit wider than these marking gauge lines that we've got here and that's usually cause for in just when you're leaving out the waist like that and you slightly tilt the chisel too much so yeah the top third of this mortise or so will be a little bit wobbly but down in the bottom there that will be pretty much exactly the same width as this chisel so what we're going to do now is chop the haunch out so I'll show you how to do that so to do this very simple just grab yourself a rip saw I'm going to use my dovetail saw for this but you could also use your tenant or RC and just nibble away at the back lower the saw down so these are techniques that I did in my video how to saw the link is up here for that just slowly work down that baseline let's grab yourself a thin chisel pop that in there and remove most of the waste like that so that's the whole inch roughed out and then what I can do is pop the chisel in the leftover lines that I haven't quite cut to here get that in there site down the endgame okay and now let's just get it right then I'll say at this point the mortise chisel is going to be a perfect fit for this so I'm just gonna get that precisely between those lines check that the chisels getting it square that is the whole scalp mortis is all done now we can focus on the tenon so I've clamped it up in the vise at 45 degrees and that way when I cut down it I'm only focusing on this line here and this line down the front whereas if I have it upright I'm having to focus on this top line to start with and I've got to worry about the back and the front line so what I'm doing here is working on two lines as opposed to three okay so that's done now let's just flip it over and to finish off this okay and now that has made a peak in the middle of Italy so now we can just remove that by holding it upright sore goes in there locates in all three lines okay now we can just cut the cheeks off so get close to that line but not write on Excel or chisel down to it later or shoulder plane down to it later okay now what we're gonna do is clean up almost down to these lines on the edges here but not quite all the way essentially we're just going to get these faces flat and then we can redraw on the haunch line here and this line here and I'll sleep this line here so to do that I'm going to use a shoulder plane it goes to use a shoulder plane to clean up a place and inside corner like I say we're not going down to the lines at this point because we're gonna be fitting this tenant into the mortise so just get it flat and clean for now if you want to know more about how to set up a shoulder plane I did a video on what's watch out for when setting up the shoulder blade there's some quite good tips in there so that links in the top right corner and now we're just going to clean up the shoulder line so we're about a millimeter off from the shoulder line so we're gonna have that take it down to half a millimeter and here again I'm sighting down this shoulder line so I can see if the chisel is tilted or not no point standing looking in from this direction because you can't see the angle [Applause] okay there we go and you could also get the shoulder plane along that line there but I've got a nice crisp edge from the chisel doesn't really need it so I'll just do the same on the other side clean it up okay so that is we'll roughed out let's just draw the haunch lines back on now going across here no earlier I got a bit carried away and started cutting off this line before cutting off the cheeks but obviously if I cut this section off it means that I'll lose my marking gauge lines here so that's why I left it on until this point but now it's ready to remove okay so remember here that this haunch is seven millimeters and the haunch that we cut in the mortise is six so don't worry about the fluffy edge that this saws going to leave we'll clean that up later just get it right up against that line drop the bottom off grab a chisel and just finish that bit off right down to the shoulder line right so we will go for our first test fit now now I suspect oh hello now I suspect that it's going to be a little bit wobbly at the top here because obviously that's where the yep so it's a little bit wobbly because that's where the chisel is providing leverage so it's a bit wobbly there however it is it's grabbing below that so that's good so at this point let's say it's pretty well in there what I'm gonna do is just check this internal wall here to make sure that it isn't diving in like this because obviously as I'm whacking this in that's gonna start providing pressure on this top bit and it might start punching the same great out so we've got to check that so you can just put the square in there move it back until it hits something and then if it starts see that bit of movement there that means that it's touching the bottom before it's hitting the top so we do need to clear that out so I'm just gonna get the mortise chisel in there again and just take out that bottom section okay let's test it again that's better rocks that's rock solid in there and we'll just try this other side as well yeah that's all fine if we can just look at the tenon here and see what sort of marks we've got on that so the tightness looks like it was along the top here I can see that this area is very bruised and very burnished instead of changing the mortise I think I'll just remove a little bit of material on that tenon there so just level it out on that burnished surface and just really carefully pair through just be aware that you are following the grain here now let's try again that's better so before we commit to bottoming that out in there I'm just going to take it out and we're just gonna check to see if there is any spots that really are rubbing because don't forget we still have got to chop down this haunch to its required width okay so now looking at the tenon I can see that it is starting to rub here you can see the pen marks are starting to bleed through quite a lot but it doesn't seem to be too much top and bottom that's where it is rubbing the most but I think it should be okay and it's just a small bump there which I'm gonna get rid of okay there we go so now I can see that it is the horse that is preventing up and bottoming out so let's take that help clean up the punch and see where that takes us okay that's pretty much down to those marking gauge lines now again another test fit okay so that's gonna go in there that's gonna be a nice snug fit so now let's chop that horse to its final height we'll double check the depth of the mortise to make sure that nothing at the bottom is going to stop this tenon from bottoming out in there and then we'll whack it together and see how close is that so just double check here and that cavity is 6 millimeters deep so I'm gonna draw six millimeters from the shoulder line on here I'm just going to square that line across then simply work back to that line so it's gonna get somewhere in there and make sure nothing at the bottom is going to prevent that from bottoming out ah so look we've got a small high point there that's hitting about 49 millimeters as opposed to 50 now okay right I'm happy with that we're gonna see if this bottoms out now okay I reckon this is gonna be the one so the only thing I have done here is just plain to a few small chamfers round the end as well to help it locate on the bottom just in case there's any debris in there in the corners that going to prevent it it's close it's see that the haunch isn't quite plumb all the way down so it's hitting this bottom bit before it hits the top and well it's stopping all the shoulders from doing it so I'm gonna get the chisel in there and just pare that out being careful not to hit the top because I'll see that's where our nice crisp joint is okay right this is gonna be the one so the haunch can hear the creaky fit of it going in but you can still press in with hand pressure so there you go there's the finished joint seeing see we've got no gaps whatsoever on the outside here and because we reference the mortise gauge off the face sides that means that these sides are flush now the holes on the top gives this tenon more location top to bottom so it's gonna prevent it from twisting over time it's gonna keep it nice and stable in there and now you can see why we started that 10 and about two-thirds down because if that tenon was too close to the top at the amount of short grain we're gonna have in this section here it's gonna be waiting much as soon as you crank that rail down it might end up busting all the end grain up in this area here so overall very happy in this joint the fit is absolutely perfect there's no wobble in it whatsoever and with glue this would be rock-solid but as you know I like to be honest in this videos and at the bottom here I did accidentally catch that with the saw when cutting out the haunch on the mortise some of you might have spotted that it's not a mistake I've ever made before so hence happened but it's one for you to watch out for when you're cutting that horn she'll just be aware that the front of the sort might start cutting into this area here otherwise pretty happy and there we go that is how you cut a mortise and tenon joint and is now another joint that you can add to your woodworking repertoire and skillet did I I was literally about to say skilosh then terrible rock solid joint that is used so much in furniture making framing and stuff and will be very useful for you in the future obviously just take your time with it start with the mortise make the tenon fit into the mortise just by taking small little adjustments at a time and you'll get a nice squeaky fit like I have here this still isn't glued up but there we go so yeah with gluing that rock-solid you could also add draw balls to this as well if you don't know what they are I'll put a link up here to my workbench build where I was building this actually where I was drawing four legs so there we go hope you enjoyed see you in the next video [Music] it's like a dance it's the way that you shake your head enfold and I will love the truth did you get a chance to say it loud your secrets kept you pushing down

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 491,732

Keywords: how to cut a mortice and tenon by hand, hand cut mortice and tenon joint, woodworking joints, beginner woodworking joints, mortice chisels, how to cut a mortise and tenon by hand, mortise, mortice, tenon, hand cut tenon, hand made tenon, woodwork, woodworking, furniture making, furniture maker, strong woodwork joints, beginner woodwork, intermediate woodwork, mortice and tenon haunch, what does a haunch do, frame and panel doors, traditional craft, traditional woodwork, join, joint

Id: 4M9jlwAQ4zY

Length: 32min 18sec (1938 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2017