The Paul Sellers’ Mortise & Tenon Method | Paul Sellers

I want to introduce you to a system of mortise and tenon joinery that I've developed it combines some system aspects of a system that I've used before but this is the complete and whole piece and I want it for you because it's going to help you to construct frames for panels for doors and other types of frames that will give you the absolute perfection you want in the alignment of the inside and outside face where a rail meets a style where a bottom rail meets a stile and so on and the system relies on these two pieces of wood or whatever framework you're going to make your wood from being deadly accurate when it's money when it's machined and so generally we do use machine stock but we can do that by hand as well but we're going to use these two pieces they've been machined they're dead parallel they're dead square and that's what you get with machines so let me show you what I mean because I'm gonna lay out for the mortise hole here so this is going to go into this rail here this style let's pretend it's a style I'm gonna make a line across here dead square bring my piece for my rail in here this will be my tenant piece so I go into that knife Nick and this is going to be a through tenon but it works this system works for a a stop tenon as well so I'm getting these as accurately as I can because this is what joinery is all about it's about accuracy it's about how much you care about the joinery so I'm going on this opposite side now I might not make this line all the way across generally when I'm making the door because I wouldn't want the lines in the wood but I just want to show you the system and this is what you're going to get something very very unusual about this system is that we do not use a mortise gage although you can use a mortise gage we're actually going to use a router to create the X the width of the mortise hole so I make a line down here like this flip it and firend like this turn it around and put the second wall in and firend again and my second wall is here that's given me a slightly wider opening than the width of matches or by about a millimeter in this case but you could go two or even three millimeters it doesn't matter we take the same router I'm going to mark the end at the width of this because my tenon this is going to be my tenon piece this piece is going to go through and you'll notice that I'm not registering my square against any particular edge because everything is parallel so I can go all the way around like this if I want to and the corners from these I'm I would normally cross over like this and you can do that or as I say if it's machined accurately it's not really necessary so there we have the tenon piece now watch what happens here again we take the same router we run it along here flip over and for end they'll be careful because you are using a knife edge on this and there is my tenon on to the end here like this turn it around this is you're going to love this method it knocks the socks off anything I've ever seen for hand-cut joinery it's great so I'm gonna cut my tenon in this let's do that at first I'll chop my mortise afterwards I'm gonna make a little step down here slide my tenants all into here you just drop my saw with each stroke up against that wall like this down to the line flip over I do the same again that small knife nicked that chisel step down just gives me the recess to drop the saw in yeah this is the next thing this is rather unusual let me show you what I mean I'm going to go here about maybe half an inch from the end make a second wall down to the line and then I'm going to take this and chisel down to the near the line watch here now I just pop it with the heel of my hand here like this and go down a little bit deeper with each purse so I'm shooting to the sky I don't go all the way through this is what happens with this type of wood this is sapele and it does have a habit the splitting in the wrong place but this is going to be fine you'll see this very nicely in a minute now we come from the opposite face so I've stopped just above my line there and then about maybe three sixteenth notes of an inch more down pop it use a chisel hammer if your hands are not toughened up I think that's important you don't have to do it this way so I'm staying above my line and I'm shooting for the skies so I've got this hump in the middle now I'm stay above it's still going to be a fat tenon at the moment but this next bit you're going to just love what we're going to do now I'm a 2/3 mill above my line gonna take my roughing out router here so I'm setting this so that the blade goes above the surface what's this know so I just move across swiveling this to take that level down turn it half a term go down a notch more like this keep going down with half turns taking care not to go down to the full depth because that's why we had this router set we wanted this one set because we never want to alter that and that is already feeling really nice so then I take this router just drop this on I'm still got too much to take off with that one so I'm going cautiously because I don't know which way this grain is running work through from both sides rather than splitting off this unsupported fibre on this side gently you can using this choose this edge just as you might choose or when you pair setting so you're feeling for the grain the run of the grain I'm trying to work with it let's try the final depth one now see what we've got I think it's still a hair too much use those little nudges here I'm going to check myself just to make sure I've not gone too deep [Music] it's very close so I'm gonna back off just a little bit using my right hand to register against this face here now the final depth is with this one there was two quotes on that one I was right on the debt so this is pressing this right hand is pressing down hard and this one is swiveling into the Curt and now I've got a super fine placed plane surface there and we flip over and we do exactly the same on the other side so we've got this right on the line [Laughter] double-handed I just tangled my chisel there let's start like this just to get the corner of chisel in first close to my depth line here couple mil above just take mid section I wanted this method because many of my students just could not get the alignment they wanted and I agonized over it and I came up with this I'm pretty sure you'll love it okay back to the rough router here I'm going to bring it up and you can hopefully see by now when I go to that router I don't think we're ready for this one yet nope when I go to that router it's already set so we equi distances the cheeks of the tenon perfectly from both sides if you have a half-a-dozen tenants to cut you just work down them all equally flipping from one to the other until you get to that last section so I keep trying this to make sure I'm not going too deep a little bit more it's a sensitive process so noise you want sharpness is caught chisel sharp plain sharp I don't have to spend too much refining that here's my last pass am I too much I am a little bit too much but I always think I'm nearer than I am mm-hmm and these routers never know I've never come across a router that actually actually takes you exactly to depth so here I'm gonna test it again that felt like a lot of material no it's good make sure you cinch these tight check them periodically hmm I think something shifted there yeah just keep checking yourself so keep checking yourself make sure the depth isn't self-adjusting and you'll probably see by now how leaving these two end pieces arm helped me to register the plane on both sides which guarantees the surface is para planar Paraplanner to this surface so just love this love that sound the feel I didn't go all the way through remember I don't know break off these corners just feel for that grained is my surface of my cheek is its plane perfectly so what happens now there they are I think you can see I can see the lines line up perfectly with this but this in the vise just take your 10 and so on cut it fat leave the line in by one or two mil even cut away from the cheek on footing away from the cheek here squeeze here just to give you a little bit of friction on the plate stop you from overshooting so I have a step there I'll do this one while I'm in the zone and now I rely on my right hand pressing down here quite aggressively to make sure but not insensitively so I'm working on this like this this feels quite like a lot there I'm going to turn this around and I'm going to switch to my chisel because that feels like I left a little bit too much meat on so I'm going sensitively spinning that on my left hand be sensitive be conscious of this hand pressing down very firmly here a little bit left in the middle have to come from outside because of the grain direction there it is there's my ten on one side done the grain was against me there it was a little bit more awkward than I had hoped okay for what we've actually done we've created a tenon as we would on any piece of wood for a rail what I'm going to do now is something a little bit different one thing I want to do is just chisel down these two shoulders with a wide chisel just to take off the fuzzy bit so I just go into the shoulder here is just because that would hold the joint off probably I think you can actually do it so you can see what I'm doing here if I go on here and put my chisel right on the top here like that so now I'm sure the shoulders are smooth aligned and everything so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to cut this off but you have to pretend that this is a rail but I want to cut this off because I'm actually going to make this into my jig to guide my mortise hole but you would have taken you would have had a tenon at both ends so in other words what you'll do when you're making your tenon rails you'll make one additional piece that will make your guide for this section of the exercise here can you see how this now lines up perfectly with the lines of my mortise hole so this now goes right on here and we clamp this in the vise to chop the mortise start away from your line and now my mortise hole lines are way off I've got about a millimeter over so I'm chopping here turn my chisel round keep the bevel of my chisel perpendicular chop and lever chop and lever I'm going to turn my chisel around now go up towards I'm going to just sneak in on my knife wall try to keep it for appendicular you can see I'm slightly off but as I go deeper it will become more perpendicular I believe so there is my last cut here perpendicular and lever and now this will go progressively deeper towards the other side when I said a few minutes ago that my gauge lines were off I meant that there was just a millimeter between the width of the chisel so it's not really off in that way it was an intentional off it was a an intentional margin there and you'll see why in just a minute and also I want to tell you the reason I cut this down was because the bolster of the chisel will catch against the wood if it's too tall so you do end up making it as a bonafide jig or guide just wants to twist there so I'm actually going deeper and deeper as I move across to this other side and the important thing is to keep your chisel so it hits the top you can keep it in the center between the lines down below but make sure this hits the top because that's what guarantees this outer wall is going to be pristine when we finish this the deeper you go the more debris you'll find in the bottom of the mortise so just clear it as you go if you can use a narrower chisel so how deep am I now is to see how deep I am this is the thickness I'm going to so I'm 1/3 of the way through but that doesn't it really goes very fast after this closing in on the extreme end of the wall now I'm in my knife wall lined up I look for it being close to perpendicular the single sided bevel tends to drive it off a little bit come about a third of the way along your mortise hole now and keep the bevel of your chisel this part perpendicular this time and just leave it that waste but don't try to remove it necessarily what this is doing it's sending me all the deeper and I keep my chisel aligned with my new guide here so this is really quite deep now this little bit chisel turned around right into my knife wall like this till I hear that dead sound it's going to get and then I stop and this is when I can gauge how far down I am can you see our gun did that that so I'm just over halfway perfect take this out of the way bring in an arrow a chisel in this case I've been using a half inch chisel for the mortise and this is a 3/8 chisel just twist the chisel all the like into that fiber these are all loose I'm not trying to clean up the bottom just remove the waste and that's it from this side but what I want to show you is what happens now with this this goes on here this clamps in the vise and we can pare down this with a wide chisel like this we just pare down here registered against this wall and just pair cut down here like and I love what I can see inside there because I have this pristine surface go to the other side be the dust go low down in the vise so you get an equal clamping pressure and here we go down here just Rock that chisel and pair cut down that inner surface so let me show you inside here smooth wall smooth wall just you know don't whiff there's a slight undulation in there it shouldn't matter this is great for me I'm just going to clean these fibers out of the corner and then hopefully by now you can see the value evolve if that was a stock mortise that would be ready to go we're going to flip over set up the alignment jig here and do exactly the same from this side let's see where we go let's start again away from my line start leaving when you've got further away from your line lift that waste out so it doesn't Jam the chips from the next series of chops keep that chisel registered soon I'll hear myself go through to the other side I can feel my chisel twisting try to avoid that as best you can it'll depend on the grain of the wood you're using I'm using sapele here this would be very nice in oak cherry walnut maybe I was over ambitious thinking I would meet the other side in this room twist it again this works very quickly very effectively and forehand too enthusiastic but as good as it gets [Music] right into my knife wall now this last bit just to straighten up if I can okay bevel it perpendicular just like we did before part way along this will even up or even deepen this side of the mortise hole [Music] it's very solid this wood still feels solid at the bottom I'm gonna break out here just for a second and clean out some of the debris this will be the same depth as the other side of course the bottom is not even you've lift up some of those fibers try not to break off the end of the mortise hole I'm careful not to leave her against the end because it'll show on the outside of the joint when I'm done back with my block my guide and away we go again [Music] the block the guy can go from either side even after you've started it makes no difference that was me going through I'm just leaving the separated waist just a little bit Charlotte so let it go too far into the other side because the chisel could go through all the way to the other extreme and damage the wall on the visible side I've turned my chisel roll around okay so in the middle section here I'm going with my chisel across grain like this just to or along the grain actually across those cuts just to clean up the midsection no this looks quite ugly inside on this side this would be fairly typical for a mortise hole at first so inside this hole I've got fibers on both the walls and this is what this method takes care of this goes on here again just line it up yeah well they cinch it nice and tight just rock that chisel with your upper shoulder pressure [Music] here that felt like I had met the other side turn it round come to this side I do love this method I have to say I've used it many times now and is the inside of my mortise hole and I'm ready to try the joint now I'm ready to try the tenon in there see how it goes just clean up these corners like a did on the other side with a narrower chisel just to get rid of the hurt and then I use my normal testing system winces - put this here corner to corner like that make sure it fits corner to corner this side and the flip over and check it from this side and there and I'm happy I'm going to try this and I'm still prepared to take another thigh off the cheeks of these Tenon's but what I'm gonna do is and I don't think personally that I could get a better tenon than what do you think very nice simple effective and it's all yours you go ahead practice it you will have ten making down for the rest of your life [Music]

Channel: Paul Sellers

Views: 304,178

Rating: 4.9283247 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, hand tools, paul sellers, mortise and tenon, mortice and tenon

Id: r-08PY3stgo

Length: 38min 29sec (2309 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2017