How to make a Drawbore Mortice and Tenon | Paul Sellers

I want to just walk you through a process that we're using woodworking called draw boring and this is where we use a dowel that we cut to pass through the mortise hole through the tenon and we offset the hole on the tenon to the mortise hole hole to draw the pin that we make this would be typical here's a dowel that we would cut to pass through here pass through a tenon like this one here so it'd go through the two together but we don't just drill a hole through both pieces we offset the hole slightly and I want to show you that process so I've already drilled these two this is actually a table that I'm working on but it could be just about anything that needs a mortise and tenon joint so I've laid out the position for the hole on this one so I'm going to bore through using a bracing bit so I'm doing a 3/8 hole in this case that's on my centerline I go through and I don't want to take off the wall on the inside so my bits good and sharp when I can feel the pressure lessening I go lightly so it's gone through that wall now I go through to the other side this gives me perfect alignment from one side to the other doesn't matter whether it's dead square or not I'm feeling for this little snail of the bit here until I can feel it protruding through turn it around and ball from the other side so I get a clean rim to the hole on both sides just like that no tear out there we go then you clean out the mortise hole make sure you don't have any fibers left inside in this case I've numbered these mortises because each mortise is dedicated so I've got si going to see so this goes here it's a good snug fit and I get this seated as much as I can tight to make sure there is no gap right in here that's as close as I've got on both sides I've got that just fine then watch what happens here let me show you what we do is we take the point of the bit here and we place it on here now on big mortises you can just measure you can use square lines and so on so I drop this inside the hole just pop it like that and that's giving me the center the very center of the hole and then we take them apart a lot of people think that you simply bore through the whole thing that's not the case at all so can you see that little dark there that was the point of the bit now I'm going to move this 1/16 nearer to the shoulder so I'm actually going to boy on that center line but 1/16 nearer to the shoulder and instead of just gambling on this and hoping I get the snail in that spot I'm going to take it and all and make a start hole just to get the exact point that I want at that 1/16 into the shoulder line and then I bore from one side just until the snail comes through again so this offsets the hole slightly on bigger mortises if you were doing a timber frame building you could be offsetting that hole by course of an inch because your pegs your tunnels might be one and a quarter or one inch whatever so they're bigger you have more flex in the wood but the principles are so there we have the offset hole in this case I'm going to glue my tenon because this is a furniture piece so this goes in here I know that I've got the right sized hole I know I've got the right step inside so all I need now is the glue one of the things is just very quickly I'll show you how I arrived at my dowel here this is the dowel piece this fits the exact size of the hole here I've got a piece of 3/8 by 3/8 material it's just slightly over 3/8 and what I do to start this dowel piece I take off the corners like this just to get a start like work down it I already read the grain here so I've got some idea of the direction of the grain I'm just taking off the corners this will just ease the passage because what I've done is I drilled a piece a hole through a piece of steel just mild steel works a hinge or just about any piece of Steel will work for this I'm going to give it a little bit of a start here just to ease it into the hole so here's where I drilled the hole in a piece of steel this is an old hacking knife start this this way that's my dowel very simple nothing special no special tapers this just a 3/8 diameter hole and that gives me the start that I needed for this on the beginning of my peg I'm going to make a start here so that as it goes into the offset hole I've staggered this point so it doesn't break the tenon inside so I'm basically sharpening this just like a pencil that offsets it slightly sawing it goes into the at the inside of the the tenon this is slightly off so it's got a little stagger inside that will help it to locate so I'm going to glue read I don't need a loss of glue peg really will hold it if you didn't want to use glue that's fine there's no it's not really essential I like the glue as well so this goes in here get it as square as you can so the shoulder line is lined up so you're not relying just on the draw ball pin if you can see inside this hole right in here probably not but I can see that the hole is nicely offset exactly where I would want it to be and then I'm not going to glue this is no need to so I Drive this pin in here now now you could do the whole frame and you could clamp it as well if you wanted to but this will be sufficient so now I'm going to drive this that's just about hit the bench here so I'm going to go in the vise on the top of the vise just to make an extra little bit of a drive here so I've got that taper on the whole is now out this is rock solid there is no way this would ever come apart so I can trim this off with a saw just a tenon saw will probably work leave your soul away from the face of the wood or use a flush cut saw if you want to I just use a regular saw it works just fine and then you can pare down the face of your wood with a sharp chisel just use the corner of your chisel work the face like this and that's really basically how we use a draw boar to pull the joints together it's a perfect joint with that and that keeps it there pretty much forever take out the that's it that's basically the glue glue I dry cut it out when it's dry and you're done and dusted with it [Music]

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 158,726

Rating: 4.9664598 out of 5

Keywords: Woodworking, Hand Tools, Paul Sellers, Mortise And Tenon, Drawbore, Joinery

Id: jgYoawkLmVk

Length: 10min 50sec (650 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2015