Mortise And Tenon Joint By Hand - Table Apron (2020)

hi i'm rob cos and welcome to my shop i'm going to show you how to cut a mortise and tenon joint by hand if you plan to build furniture that you intend to have last you've got to learn this joint and we're going to do it using a leg and an apron as if we were making a small table sit back and relax i'm going to tell you everything i know i'm rob cosman and welcome to my shop we make it our job to help take your woodworking to the next level if you're new to our channel make sure you subscribe and hit the notification bell which will alert you whenever we release a new video anytime we use a new tool or technique we'll leave a description down below so that make it easier for you to find all right let's get back to work there there are lots of examples of mortise and tenon and i find it interesting that very few people have ever seen it because rarely does it fail what i'm talking about is commercial furniture that you buy you've all seen what it looks like when a dowel comes apart you've got a dowel on one end and you got a hole full of glue at the bottom on the other not a very good joint but a well cut and fit mortise and tenon it's going to last a long time i'm going to show you some examples first of all what is it well take a piece of wood and you reduce the end to be a little bit smaller a little bit narrower than the original piece and it fits into a corresponding rectangular shaped hole in the other piece now let me show you some examples first i'll show you this one over here since we're going to kind of duplicate this it's a small table made entirely with hand tools several years ago now what i did a little bit different here is instead of having one big long hole or mortise i actually cut two mortises which allowed you to keep this piece of wood in the middle to help strengthen that piece if you had a big mortise here and another one over here you don't have a lot left in that i just found it would be very weak so by doing it this way you maintain some integrity of this piece very strong joint the most stress placed on this chair is going to be right back here where this apron meets this leg people rock back on the chair and you can imagine the amount of stress on that now modern chairs typically are made with dowels and they almost always fail this one is done a little bit differently this is actually in a prototype and it's been beating around the shop for well over to almost 30 years and it's still together and gets used for everything from standing on to piling stuff on there's two tenons just like you saw on that example they come almost all the way through but on this side i actually used two half inch dowels and those dowels come all the way through that tenon into this cheek to lock that into place now i just said dowels weren't very good they're not but this is a low stress joint rarely do you have people leaning over like that on their chair but the way those two dowels lock this tenon the wood will fail before that joint will fail so as i said you've got to learn how to do it now i'm going to introduce you some traditional tools that were used to cut this joint entirely by hand it is not difficult but you have to pay attention and the level of precision required i think exceeds that of a dovetail we're going to use a large range of tools but i'm going to highlight some unique ones that if you're not familiar with cutting mortise and tenons then you may not have seen these before i'll start over here this is really the heart of the joint it's called your mortise chisel and just to contrast so that you see what i'm talking about there's a typical beveled edge tends to be narrow this way it has bevels on the side to allow you to get in for instance in cutting dovetails between the pins and part between the tails so you don't bruise them whereas a mortise chisel has parallel sides lots of mass this way not only because you're going to be really wailing on this thing but those sides prevent or help prevent the chisel from twisting as you're chopping down into that hole so i have half inch 3 8 5 16 quarter and 3 16. of course you need them all but if you're going to cut a mortise you're going to use that to be the exact size of your joint so a quarter inch mortise is going to be cut with a quarter inch mortise chisel and we're going to use a gauge in order to lay out the tenon as well so what we would do and there's numerous gauges on the market this is the one that we made it's got two cutters and you loosen this brass locking knob you squeeze that quarter inch chisel between those two cutters tighten it up and now when you remove it and go lay out your tenon it's going to be the exact width of that chisel and that's exactly what you're looking for so you have a mortise gauge and you'll use a marking gauge as well but that's fairly common this is my small router plane and you'll find that this comes very handy for getting those the face of the tenon to be absolutely parallel to the face of the board and if you have to go in and fix the shoulder the interesting thing about a mortise and tenon joint is you never see it once it's put together it's hidden for life however the part that you do see is where the sides of the shoulders that go around the tenon come up against that face where the mortise is and that's got to be precise you don't want any gaps there if you can't get it perfect from the saw then you use a tool called a shoulder plane and what's unique about the shoulder plane i'll contrast it to something like a block plane block planes bench planes the blade does not go all the way to both sides so you could not get up against a vertical surface imagine trying to plane this right in that corner you can't do it but with the shoulder plane and your blade runs all the way that allows you to go right into that vertical wall and by the way the blade is always a little bit wider than the plane body so that if you're going to work one side of the other you can come in push it down and that'll bring the blade flush with the edge of the plane so that it doesn't step on you and what i mean by that is if the blade were in each pass would leave a little bit of material in the corner and the next pass it would kick it out kick it out kick it out you want that to be cutting so that it's right in line with the side of the plane that is called a shoulder plane two more tools and you can get by with one but i like to have the option cross cut small cross cut so i actually call this a joinery cross cut so the cutting teeth are very close to the heavy brass back which provides a lot of stability this way and the idea is to get good enough that you can go in there and literally join right from your saw so that you don't have to come in and fix that shoulder with a chisel or a shoulder plane after the fact however you always have to allow for that possible error and then you have something called a tenon saw but the tenon size has ripped teeth it's got a little more of a stout blade because typically you're going to be making a deeper cut and we are going to mimic this joint so we're going to cut i'm not going to do two just for the sake of the time because it's essentially the same technique i'm going to cut a mortise or a square hole in this leg and then we're going to cut a tenon on the end of this apron and we're going to fit it to it in future videos we're going to go in and actually taper that leg and take you all the way through the process of doing that part of a piece of furniture okay let's lay this out first thing we have to determine is what size chisel we're going to use otherwise what size mortise and as you know or you may not know when you talk about a mortise and tenon joint typically in cutting the tenon you go third third and a third here's what i mean if i were joining two pieces of three-quarter inch material together if i made that tenon a half an inch wide and i only had an eighth of an inch left for shoulders worse than that when it came to cutting my my mortise over here and i had just eight inch walls to house this big half inch mortise makes for a very weak joint because of these narrow or very thin outside walls so typically what you would do is cut that down so that you had one third of the thickness in the shoulder one third the thickness in the tenon and one third thickness in the shoulder over here which corresponded with a mortise that was a quarter of an inch or one third of the thickness and you had a quarter inch on either outside edge because this p this board with the tenon in it has been reduced in strength to whatever this thickness is so you don't want it too small because that really weakens it no matter how big this apron is you've got this little tiny tenon and that becomes your weak link so you always want to try to keep as much material as possible but you can't sacrifice it over here either well in this case we are going to add this apron into this leg so this thin piece is going to be cut and joined into this thicker piece that means that we can keep a little more material over here because we have the extra material over here now i'm not going to do a double i'm going to do a single just for the sake of getting through this but we have the option of a half inch or we could go down to a quarter of an inch and as i said i think a quarter inch is too small you're sacrificing too much i actually think the half inch is going to be too big not because of the tenon but because of the mortise over here and you have to take into account that we're cutting this in pine it's not really strong so we have to keep a fair bit of material here to maintain the integrity of the strength of this leg think about it you build a hall table and you've got that attached like that that's the only contact between the leg and the rest of the piece of furniture and somebody bumps that with a vacuum and there's a lot of torque being applied way down here a lot of leverage on that joint so you got to keep that in mind what i'm going to suggest on this piece is that we keep our tenons and our mortise is out towards the outside surface so instead of having them in the middle we're going to move it out here so maybe we'll keep an eighth of an inch gap or eighth of an inch reveal right here and an eighth of an inch over here and the reason why i'm going to show you we're going to lay it out on the end of this i have a small rule now what i'm going to suggest and we'll just draw it out and see how it looks if we were to keep a quarter of an inch out here go with a 3 8 mortise and i'm just going to draw that all the way across because we need to know what we're removing from material now you got to remember we're going to have an apron over here as well so let's lay this one out keep a quarter of an inch here there's our mortise now this i think applies to softer weaker woods in particular i don't want to chop this mortise all the way to here and have this mortise meted all the way to here because then you end up with this chunk of material and nothing connecting it from the rest of the leg so i'm going to prefer to stop this back here somewhere let's measure it and see because we do need some depth because our only strength is going to come from where the cheek the long-range cheek of the tenon makes contact with the long grain inside face of both sides of the mortise this is end grain so it doesn't matter if it touches the bottom there's no glue strength gained there that is end grain that is end grain so even though this is long grain and this is long grain there's no real advantage to the it touching there's no significant glue strength so the main strength is going to come from this surface and that surface touching the two inside faces of that mortise which by the way is also the reason why this needs to be so precise if it's loose and you put extra glue in there traditional wood glue does not have gap-filling capabilities and that joint is going to fail if it's too tight and you have to really pound it in there most of your glue is going to get pushed to the bottom of the mortise now you're relying primarily on a mechanical fit and if you think about the stress on that joint we talked about on a chair leg that's eventually going to wiggle loose and your joints going to fail so this is a very precise joint you want that surface and that surface to literally touch that surface and that surface so that the glue can do its job so with that in mind we want this to be as deep as possible yet we still want to maintain some integrity here so we have 7 8 of an inch i'm going to suggest that we go three quarter so if we go three quarters of an inch deep and the same thing over on this one now that's not going to give us a lot but it is going to maintain or it's going to it's going to keep this piece it'll make it a little more solid we've got three-quarter and three-quarter we've got enough surface there that i'm comfortable with that being adequate if we needed to we could even come in from the inside and pin those but we'll save that for another video so i think we can go with that so i prefer to actually lay out the mortise with a marking gauge but i'm going to give you an option i'm going to take the mortise gauge we loosen it up unscrew this cutter set the 3 8 mortise chisel in there and tighten that up and then come in here with this threaded piece of brass and tighten that up so that it stays put now i'm going to use this primarily for cutting laying out the tenon but you could use it for the mortise as well in other words what you would do is simply set that where you want it lock it down actually i would prefer to do it on the closed side then your cutters aren't quite so far away from the head of the tool and you could go in and lay that out actually before we do that we have to determine where and we're going to put this so let's just lay this out first that's just a rough okay so there's our overall length now we can't come too close to this end particularly on softwood like pine we've got to leave enough material here that that'll hold that together i'm going to suggest on this one we probably yeah i think we can get away with 5 8 of an inch so this will be one end of the mortise now down here we can get as much material as we want all we need down here is just enough to give us a neat little shoulder so that when we come in we can make sure that that makes nice contact and shows a nice tight joint so on this end i'm going to suggest we can get away with just an eighth of an inch so we'll put a line here representing the opposite end of the tenon now as i said you can come in here and you can lay it out with a mortise gauge the problem with this gauge is that puts your bevels on the outside not quite an issue on here because it's going to be concealed but i prefer to actually use just a marking gauge and work to one line and i'll show you how i do it but just bear in mind that you can use that so i'm going to come in here i'm going to set the gauge for that outside edge and i'm going to scribe a line between those marks nice thing about a wheel style gauge is as you get need to get close you can just roll it and that prevents you from going too far now to make this a little easier i'm going to come in here and i'm just going to draw some perpendicular lines perpendicular to that gauge mark i just made don't really need to worry about a per a parallel mark out here because of the way the mortise chisel works these are going to help me set my chisel down and keep it perpendicular to that line okay now i'm going to use my 3 8 and you want that to be sharp enough that it'll cut you don't want it to be too acute you're really wailing on this thing so you need to have that fairly stout but since you're actually going to be going down there and literally slicing across the end grain you want to bite in now one last thing we need to do and that is we need to take into account how deep we're going to chop we've already determined that but we need to lay it out on the chisel i find the easiest way to do it is to simply come in like this lay it there and put a mark with a sharpie which is easy enough to come off on that stone easy to see doesn't wear off too easy i'm just going to check it to make sure and that's going to allow me to get right to that line now when we set out for this we want to be able to see plumb i got to clear my bench off but we want to set this in a position where we're able to see plumb so that we keep those sides of those that mortise perfectly square to this face if we don't we put it together and our apron is going to be off to one side of the other all right so i've got this trapped so that i can see plumb i've got it made over top of the bench not over the dog hole or not over the gap where the vise is i'll hold that in place now i drew lines on here and i'll explain to you what they're what they're for when i set the chisel down instead of trying to get this side of the chisel parallel to that line as long as the tip of the chisel is parallel to those lines then it's going to be square in reference to the that gauge line now i also want to highlight something else i'm going to do with pen at the risk of not being able to get it off so this this is the edge come on pen that's the edge of the mortise and this is the edge of the mortise the last thing i'm going to do is finish there so i'll start probably on this one and i'll start on this one in this direction and i'll save that last little bit and you'll see why so i know how deep to go the way this this works it's really interesting it'll just keep pushing pushing the shavings forward the chunks it's easy to separate them on the side you always you always chop your mortise parallel to the apartment yeah parallel to the way the grain runs never across this way now the sooner we can get to foot depth the better so i'm going to start right on this one and i'm lining it up and by the way i'll tell you now the reason why i only work to one line i find it drives me crazy if i'm trying to keep that chisel between two lines it almost always makes me think i'm sitting on top of one and or or the other so by having one line i only have to worry about that that side being over here far enough and i will also say you could go in there with a block of wood and clamp that right on the line and use that as a gauge to help hold that plum i'm going to do this without but that's a that is a way of ensuring that your hole or your mortise stays the walls stay perpendicular to the face of the piece i've got a square here too that we'll use to check occasionally so we're going to get right on there i'm up against i'm to the i'm right against that gauge line my chisel i've set it down right on that perpendicular line the pencil mark i made now and i'm eyeballing this to keep it plum it's pine so it doesn't take much to drive that down i'm going to step back here probably a quarter of an inch hardwood you probably can't take as much soft wood quite easy i'm going to step back this one about an eighth i'm not going to do i'm not going to do anything to remove that waste material just yet again i'm using those pencil lines to keep this chisel so that the sides are parallel to that line now at this point i'm going to no it's not deep enough yet try it again again using that pencil line and i want to get down full depth as quick as possible i don't know if you're noticing but i've got to do a little bit of steering as i'm chopping that to keep it from twisting in the hole now you know i didn't tighten that up enough these pieces come out quite easily okay i can see my mark his pair is right on or my sharpie mark is right at the surface now i'll push that down it's almost not sticky enough okay so those chunks come out quite easily i prefer to operate it like you would operate the bolt on a rifle meaning instead of holding it like this and pushing it which might allow it to go one side of the other keep it just in the center of your palm and hopefully the sides of the chisel will reference off the sides of the mortise and allow that to go in the direction you want as opposed to veering left or right now i'm down to depth and it's really interesting how this works because i can make the next chop go right to depth there's lots of room for the debris that's what happens is when you first start in order for this material to move back it's got to have an opening so as you make each successive chop a little deeper a little deeper there's lots of room for that debris to go and now i can go right to the bottom so i'm going to come in here which means i'm going to be a full eighth of an inch set my chisel right on that line a little bit of steering and i'm watching to make sure let's just check and see uh that's not bad i'm off maybe it'll be less than a degree push that out and you see how these pieces come out it's really quite amazing now at this stage i'm going to grab my quarter inch chisel and the reason i'm doing that if i use this to try to get out that debris i risk wrecking those walls all i want to do is just get some of this material that has been cut free but it's jammed in there if you use them not so much with soft wood but if you're doing this in hardwood and you try to go in there and pry that out with a regular bevel edged chisel it just flexes it too much so by using a mortise chisel which is far more stout i can get in there and just get rid of some of that material that has been severed but just got jammed in the hole now you'll notice that i'm prying against this surface that's the reason why i don't start right here this is going to allow me to go in and do a little bit of prying without fear of wrecking the perimeter of that mortise i just cut myself accidentally touched the end of that chisel okay now we've got to come back here but we're at the depths we're at depth from about here over but we've got to come in here i gotta go get a band-aid that was more to keep the blood off the wood than anything else now what i'm doing is just coming back working my way backwards and the shape of the chisel will push that debris allows me to go full depth now as i get closer to the line i can still pry a little bit before i come in here so i'll get down there and what i want to do is i want to get this crest which is going to become my leverage point or my pivot point and get in there and i can break that stuff free still allows me to i can leverage against this without fear of damaging anything but now that i've got most of that material out now i'll come in and i'll work right to the line now on this one i'll get it started just a little pull to get free it up i'm going to do this in three steps okay now on this one after i get it started i'm just going to have a look this way to make sure that i'm going plumb in that direction and just a little wiggle just enough to free it now as long as i can get that pivot point down below the surface i can still go in there and do a little bit of leveraging i don't want to touch this top edge but i can scrape that bottom edge the bottom surface of that mortise to this point and that'll make it so i can easily get rid of that stuff now we'll go the other way and this is where you want your your chisel to be sharp because you're coming down on an end grain wall and you need it to bite you don't want it to slip and we'll put that right on the gauge line have a quick look to make sure that we're plumbing that direction and do the same thing with this quarter inch get down there and just a little wiggle now pine you can almost you can almost pry or free up those fibers just by leveraging against your fingers it's soft enough now i'm going to replace my marking gauge cutter with a narrower diameter one this is 3 8 and it's quite stout so it it's not susceptible to being broken and i'm going to set it for the depth that i want again i'm taking it right off of the chisel and i can put that down in there and i can run that back and forth and if i can't then i know i don't have the depth i need and i suspect well try to do that with a normal cutter and there's a good chance it's going to break now that shifted on me so let me go back and do that again i need to tighten it up a little bit more i think i'm still a little bit shallow yeah i'm sitting on the bottom so i got to go in here so what do i do to go in and make this a little bit deeper well i'm not going to do it this way i'm just going to use this to get rid of the loose debris so we got a bunch of bumps in there the easiest way to get rid of them is to take your chisel and just make a bunch of small we'll call them incisions small chops and what it does it breaks up those fibers and makes it really easy to remove them so try to keep that chisel from twisting now see we can get out again narrow to the narrower mortise chisel just keeps it from getting jammed [Music] now we'll go and see if we're down to depth check this before i do it well i'll keep that laying flat so that it doesn't dent the surface i may be prying on this too much okay now i'll get a beveled edge chisel and just go down there and get rid of anything that's stuck on the side i don't want to change i don't want to change the fact that these two side walls are parallel to each other so i'm just going to carefully go in there and just get rid of the little stringy stuff that might be hanging on okay so that is done now i'm going to just check this back wall to make sure that it looks like it might be sloped a little bit yeah it is so i've got to go in here and just pare down that back wall a little bit i think that one's okay [Music] okay so that mortise is done and now we'll cut the tenon to fit that and before we assemble it we'll take the final clean up pass get rid of any of these marks the brass sometimes leaves those black marks on there and we also want to get rid of our pen and pencil marks all right i want to clean i want to clean that off right now because i hate looking at it [Applause] all right that's better it is so this is the end we're going to cut i want a nice deep marking gauge line all the way around when you do that edge sometimes it's easier to roll it that edge will help you when it comes time to dressing those shoulders i'll put it in the vise now get our mortise gauge and we we're going to have about an eighth of an inch reveal out there so we're going to center this in the apron i think we already did this but i'm going to check it so i'll just push it down there like that and leave a couple of marks and then do that and it's not centered so we've got to come to my right i usually just do this by guessing it and then by pushing pushing it in like that leaving a mark and then doing it like this you can tell whether or not you're right on that looks good okay with that locked holding firmly on this side and i find it easier if you take multiple light passes and then just gradually go deeper and that helps prevent the grain from wanting to make those cutters wander and i want a nice deep gauge line again it makes it easy when it comes time to perfect those cheeks and then we'll go down the face okay now i'll just identify the waste not that we're going to cut the wrong side but this will hopefully ensure it okay this is where we want to try to get the sawing part right the first time so i'm going to go in i've got to make a cut all along there which is fairly long and down the face i prefer to do these ones first then we'll then we'll cut these ones back so my saw has these little starter teeth in the front which makes it a little bit easier so i'm going to come in here actually let me show you another little tip if you want to do this it takes a bit of time but sometimes it's worth it you can get yourself a little uh what they call a knife wall by taking a chisel actually i'm going to use my 17 degree it'll slice through that stuff a little easier starting in the waist coming up against that gauge line that i told you to make nice and deep if you start back here and on a somewhat shallow bevel go in until you hit that wall and what it's going to do is going to give you a really easy place to start your cut [Applause] now we can go in set the teeth of the saw right up against it i'm going to start on the back side and what i'm attempting to do is to get this part of the kerf started first then once that started it'll keep itself in line i can follow the plumb cut so that i keep that one in line now i'm going to lean back here and i'm watching my saw as it follows the gauge line down this face and hopefully that kerf i started along here is going to keep the saw in line in that direction now i don't want to go any lower than the gauge line so be careful as you get close if you have enough or if the set on your saw is narrow enough that'll help in making a nice straight cut remember straight simply means shortest distance between two points so you've got to aim it but then from that point it should carry on now if your cheek over here is somewhat narrow or thin i actually push against it to help to help keep that kerf guiding the saw cut if this is a narrow piece any pressure laterally from the saw will cause that to bend out and that allows the saw to wander but if you put a little bit of pressure here that's keeping pressure on both sides of the saw blade helping it to track properly [Laughter] okay now on this one we can do the same thing but i'm going to go in and i'm going to attempt to do it without that tip so what i'm going to do is start back here first with my bungled thumb press laterally against it to help get it started and by starting on an angle like this i only have to focus on one spot if you set your saw down like this and try cutting you're having to focus along the entire long three inch long line but this way on an angle i can continue to cut and as i cut and i move along that gauge line i can make any adjustments [Music] side to side so at that point i've got my curve started here now i'll do the same thing which is stop focusing on this focus over here until my cut is right at that gauge line and then i can slowly bring my saw back up this way again i'm using the kerf that's been cut to help guide the saw so that it continues on the path i want which is nice and straight now if i needed to i could turn this around so i could push against that piece but that waste is actually pretty stiff watch your gauge line okay that's close enough now i'm going to remove that waste next and to do that i'm going to use my bench hook this is just a device that helps me support the piece while it's being sawn and it also protects my bench top i'm going to use a crosscut saw for this this is another situation where if you want you can go in and you can create that little knife wall working in the waste just carefully you want to be on enough of an angle so that you're not going to skip by that gauge mark and end up making a mess on the face of your board this one needs to be just a little deeper now this is a very shallow cut i'm going to bring it right out here again as i mentioned the purpose of this is so that when i saw through this piece if i was going to i'd be sawing into my sacrificial bench hook instead of my bench so it's a fairly wide cut i'm going to squeeze the work piece to the fence to hold it in place that frees up my index finger to act as a pointer to help that saw get started exactly where i want i do it on an angle for the same reason so that i can i can focus on where the blade is making contact with the wood now i think i've already left a little too much material on here that's all right we can fix it i don't want to go into that tenon at all because it's already relatively small in comparison to this piece now we'll do this one we'll do it without the knife wall index finger get it started so at that point if it's in the right spot you just you can make little adjustments side to side so that you follow on the waist side of that gauge mark now what this does require is you need to develop a sense of where plum is and i'll say this a pistol grip saw will help you do that if you're using a round-handled saw it doesn't register in your hand this does and after a fair bit of this and doesn't take forever plum will be right you'll just know this is plum this is 10 degrees that's 10 degrees if you're cutting dovetails but this becomes extremely advantageous when you're doing something like this because instead of having to focus on am i making a plum cut all of my concentration can be in following that gauge line across the face of the board and that's what's going to be seen i'm just checking that to make sure that i don't cut into that tenon anymore and i have to okay now we'll put this in the vise i'm gonna use a larger or a wider chisel just so i can get a little more of this done and i'm just going to reference against the cheek and just finish that little bit turn around do the other side there's just that little bit of debris in the corner okay now we need to lay out the ends so we'll put this in place this is going to be flush on the top now this is where i'm going to use my little combination square and i'll show you why first thing i need to do is come square across the end now i want a plumb line to follow and you obviously can't do that with a square but you can do it with a combination square by just pulling that rule up until you clear the bottom and then drop your plumb line i want this standing plum so i'll just check it with my square i advocate that anytime you're cutting something in your vise take a second to make sure it's standing plumb and that'll reinforce your ability to make a plum cut by feel now you notice i reached for my dovetail saw why well this is a small cut i have more control with this than i do with the larger tenon saw and this is the one i prefer to use so i'm going to get right up against the i line to be careful don't want to cut out here you'll notice it now we can lay this one on its side i want that to be level so i'm just eyeballing the top edge with that strip on my bench i'm going to use my crosscut saw another place where you can come in create that little wall allows me to set right against it you want to be careful on this one again you don't want to any scoring that occurs out here is going to show in your finished joint so you've got to be careful on that at the same time i try not to be overly careful which means don't purposely saw in this direction just because you're afraid of cutting into that shoulder it's best to just do a little bit of practice do you eventually get to the point where you can take this right from the saw okay now i'm going to come in and i'm just going to clean up anything i see wrong now i'm going to grab my magnifiers and what i'm looking for is that gauge line that i made if you remember i told you to make it nice and deep because this is where it helps so i'm going to set my chisel right on it if you look real closely i don't know if the camera can pick it up or not but down here i don't have anything the cut i made is perfectly parallel to the gauge line but over here i can set my chisel on the gauge line and i have debris above it well that means the joint's not going to close properly so i'm going to set my chisel right on that little gauge line and then push it maybe slightly undercut but not much and the 17 degree chisel taking a fairly narrow cut is only half an inch wide allows me to push through that material with very little effort affording me lots of control flip this over and do the other side it's easier to work on this side i didn't do a very good job on this one either because i can see material above the gauge line all the way across if i tried to put that joint together i wouldn't this wouldn't be tight the part we see so that's why you've got to come in and remove that now here i'll just go partway and i'm gonna do the same thing here and i'm gonna go straight in now i undercut a little bit there but fortunately that's going to be up at the top and you're not going to see that because the table top will be sitting on there okay now i'm going to take a quick look and see if i can still see my gauge line from the mortise gauge and if i see my gauge line and material up beyond it then i know this is going to be a little bit too wide small shoulders on the bottom okay i think i might be a little bit too long i am so i've got to take off a bit of material on the overall length of the tenon so i'll come in here set my chisel just a little bit inside of that pen mark and just pair down probably need to do both let's try that again a few times i have to fit this the better it just prevents things from getting beat up now just looking down in there and i see some debris in the bottom i want this to be snug but not so tight that i have to pound it together and it definitely cannot be loose so if it moves back and forth i've got to fix it so we'll come out here first and just kind of try it that's that's not bad might might mean a little adjustment that's a little bit too snug i could easily pound it together but i'm gonna i'm gonna improve it i'll show you how give me a second i'm just gonna clear the bench off okay now when i inspect that by eyeballing it those sides look pretty close to being parallel to these sides this one however looks like it might slope out just a little bit so i'm going to try that one first i'll put it in the vise and i'm going to use my small router plane so i've got to keep that bench dog down lower than the surface this is one of my favorite tools for when it comes to sneaking up on something and getting it precise i'm going to drop that down this is also where you could go in and reference that cutter right on that marking gauge line that was left now when you push this across the shape of the cutter is going to pull the tool down like that so i've got to put a lot of weight on my left side to keep that so that this ends up parallel to this so i'm going to go out here sometimes i find it easier if you just kind of angle it a little bit more of a shearing cut now as i guessed i was off a little bit that's why i'm taking more material off on the inside than i did out here they also make a large shoulder plane but i like this one because the cutter is really close to the support of this flat part so you get quite precise with it now before i go any further i'm going to try this and see if that wasn't what was needed maybe just a little bit snug and i'm being fussy so now i flipped it around i'm not going to do any more work on that because i know that one is exactly where it needs to be i'm going to try the opposite side see if i can find any remnant of the original gauge line is that the side i just did it is okay so i can see the original gauge line right here i'll go in and drop that cutter down this northern white pine is such a easy wood to cut it's fantastic for learning these techniques let's try that okay that felt good that means that it's making it's making contact on both sides not not excessively tight to where it's going to push that cheek out and yet i'll leave i'll be able to get a little bit of glue in there so let's just uh make sure so when we inspect this that shoulder is nice and tight now before i assemble that something else i will do is i'm going to take my just because it's convenient my little squirrel tail and i'm going to go in there and i'm just going to cut that needs to be sharpened i'll try my block plate i'm going to cut a little chamfer on the leading edge of that tenon now what that will do is when i go in and i only glue the inside here any glue you put on the face of the tenon is going to get squeezed off and it's going to end up out here and now you got to go in and try to clean that off put all of your glue on the inside of your mortise and i would coat this side and that side and what those little chamfers will do allow some of that glue to actually slide up the side so that you get good coverage but i don't want to put this together now because in a future video we're going to go in and we're going to show you how to taper that so you get a nice looking furniture leg we'll also at this point we would go in and finish playing that too obviously that has to be done before you can assemble i wish there was some way of telling you how tight that is but if you can just didn't take a whole lot of work to put that down and to get that in place so there you go if you like my work if you like my style of teaching click on any one of these videos to help take your woodworking to the next level and i've always said better tools make it a whole lot easier if you click on the icon with the plane in the chisel it'll take you to our website introduce you all of our tools and also talk to you about our online and in-person workshops good luck in your woodwork

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 42,394

Rating: 4.9662118 out of 5

Keywords: mortise and tenon joint by hand, cutting a mortise and tenon joint by hand, how to make a mortise and tenon joint by hand, mortise and tenon joint, mortise and tenon by hand, mortise and tenon table legs, hand cut mortise and tenon, hand tool woodworking, beginner woodworking joints, rob cosman, woodworking, woodworking joints

Id: O-j__IVfbeY

Length: 58min 38sec (3518 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020