Through Mortise And Tenon Joint - (Made Easy)

hi i'm rob cos and welcome to my shop in this video i'm going to show you how to make a through mortise and tenon now it takes a bit of time but it really makes a decorative feature on a piece of furniture stay with me i'll walk you through the entire process i'm rob cosman and welcome to my shop we make it our job to help you take your woodworking to the next level if you're new to our channel be sure to subscribe turn on that notification bell and don't forget to turn on the notification on your mobile device so you'll know every time we release a new video good all right back to the bench so in this video what we're going to do is something called a through mortise and tenon now it's similar in a lot of ways to what you might call a blind mortise and tenon except in this case it comes all the way through and you see it in the opposite side and therein lies the difficulty it has to be done just right the gap where it protrudes can't exist it's got to be nice and tight you can make it flush if you want or you can leave it raised like this and then just cut a chamfer all the way around which i actually prefer either way there's some there's some intricacies to it that you've got to pay attention to in order to get it so it works just right and as i said most important no gap by the way the other thing you have to make sure is that this piece has to be finished before you assemble the joint pretty hard to go in there and start trying to plane or sand that with this thing already sticking through there so it's a bit of a challenge but tools are sharp and if you're willing and up to it you'll be able to do it let's go first thing we need to do is explain the joint in its basic form so it's called a mortise and tenon this is the tenon this is the mortise it's typically a rectangular not always could be square but a rectangular extension of a piece of furniture going into a mating shaped hole in the opposite piece of furniture so the tenon fits into the mortise why is it such an important joint well it provides a lot of resistance to shear force which would be coming down like this it can provide quite a bit of force although this is where i think it's weakest to tensile force trying to pull it apart like that provides a tremendous amount of force against twisting and the sad part is it never gets seen if it does it's because it failed there are times when it can be seen and that's what we're going to discuss today but in its basic form a mortise and tenon rectangular extension going into a opposite rectangular shape or hole in the other piece i'm going to cut this joint out of black walnut so this piece is going to have the tenon on it it's going to come through a mortise on this side and you'll see it come out the other side if there's a rule to be followed when it comes to cutting joints your pieces have to be accurately milled and that will almost coincide with how well the joint turns out now i've got videos on this so if you want we'll leave a link below and you can go through and see some of my techniques in preparing stock for joinery okay you're gonna need a selection of tools to do this now if i was joining these two pieces like this then the rule we would follow would be a third third and a third let me explain this is a good example so obviously this is going to be at its weakest wherever it's the smallest and that's where it is so i could have made this tenon a lot bigger however then i would cut out a lot more material and i'd leave little wee thin walls on the side of this mortise and that would become the weak link so by using a third third and a third meaning this is one-third the opening is one-third and the other side of the cheek or the other side of the mortise is one-third and of course corresponding on this piece same thing one-third of shoulder one third is ten and one-third of shoulder now i'm not going to do that in this case i'm going to join this piece like this so in this circumstance i'm going to try to preserve as much material as i can on this piece and i yet i still need to have a shoulder that goes all the way around just like i do on this one that allows you to make this nice and square to the face of the tenon and also square along here and along there so when that goes together it comes up nice and tight so what i want to do is i want to match my chisel when you're if you're cutting mortises and tenons by hand then the size of the mortise is dictated by your chisel so you're going to need a selection so i'm going to use my half inch and that's going to give me enough of a cheek on either side it'll still give me a sufficiently strong joint if you can imagine that's going to be how much the thickness of this piece is going to be reduced to but that'll still be plenty strong and as i said it'll give me a shoulder all the way around so i can set these two aside i'm going to need a mortise gauge because in order to get this accurate i'm going to take my mortise gauge and i'm going to open it up i'm going to set this chisel down in between the two cutters i'll tighten that cutter against the side of the mortise chisel and then snug it up with this thumb screw and now when i transfer this onto another piece this is the exact dimension so since this is going to be somewhat decorative meaning the amount that you're going to see out here i'm going to set my marking gauge to represent how far out i want that so i'm going to have a little chamfer all the way around i'm going to set it right about there i'll lock it and this is completely arbitrary you can do whatever you want i've already planed the end of that piece with my shooting board so it's nice and clean so i'm going to take that dimension and i'm going to scribe a line and it's going to be a nice heavy line because i'm going to use it as a guide when it comes to sawing and i'll go all the way around most important thing about your marking gauge is that the cutter be flat on this side and as sharp as you can get it hey if you like this video we have more our newsletter has subscriber only content monthly discount on tools and anything we bring out that's new subscribers get first crack at it click on the link below let's get back to work so there's my shoulder line now i'm going to go ahead and set that in the vise i'm going to take my marking gauge my mortise and gauge that's already have been set and i want to center that in this piece now you can get really finicky with this or you can just eyeball it and by eyeballing it what i'm doing is i'm trying to line it up so this edge and this edge are the same distance from the outside of both sides so what i'll do is just push down there and leave a little mark and then flip it around and see if that lines up and it's close enough that i'm going to work with it so i'm going to use this little knurled brass knob and i'm going to be pulling in this direction and i'm going to start with just light passes and i'll make multiple light passes until i start to get a little bit deeper obviously deeper with each pass i want a very well defined gauge line that'll work for you especially when it comes to sawing then i've got to go down the face i'm being really careful to keep this face of this tool tight to this inside edge these surfaces have all been finished meaning they've been finished planed don't go past your gauge line it'll show and then we do the same thing on the inside before we do that we need to determine our length getting ahead of myself so i'm going to use a pair of dividers and i like dividers because there's no interpreting if i were to use a measuring tape i would have to measure that and then it's up to me to determine how close that is to an inch and 13 16. and it looks to be a little bit strong well by the time i've used have to transfer that measurement by the tape several times i could be off a fair bit instead i'm going to use a pair of dividers one set they're not going to move and i'm i want to have approximately the same amount of shoulder on the outside edges as well so i'll hold one here and just turn that until i get it where i want it now i'll get that in place leave a mark leave a mark and then i can come over here and i can do the same thing leave a mark and leave a mark now that establishes my outside edges now i'm going to come in here put the pen right in that mark and i'm going to make this pronounced so that you can see it i'd be very careful if i was doing this on a piece of furniture so as not to have lines i had to try to remove afterward now i'm going to take this i'm going to work from the same side because i've got to lay out both sides and i'm going to run a line between the two nice thing about a wheel style gauge is you can simply roll it to get that last little bit the old style marking gauges that had a pin as soon as you set it down the beam or the wood portion would obscure the pin and it was all guesswork this one allows you to go in there and roll it into position i want that nice and deep now i've got to carry this around to the other side because this is going to be cut from both sides so what i'll do is i'm just going to work on one line instead of trying to carry two you'll see why and then i'll just set in here let me move my mark over here now i've got a little bit of air possibly on one instead of a little bit on two which would double my problem from the same edge i'm going to come over here and i'm going to gauge a line just like i did on the other one do it a couple times instead of trying to get it all with one much easier to do it with light pressure multiple times and to try to do it with once one move with a lot of pressure where you have a tendency to lose control okay now to help hold the chisel in place we can actually do this in a couple of ways i'm going to put some rectangular or perpendicular lines stemming from that gauge line and this will help me when i'm setting my chisel down so that the side of the chisel remains parallel to that line i'll do the same thing on the other side i'm going to show you two ways to do this the first one we're going to do is freehand the other way we're going to the other side we're going to chop and we're going to take away some of that um some of those ver some of those variables and make it a lot more precise if you don't want to risk trying to do this freehand okay so my mortise chisel is uh has parallel edges which is the way i like it and the back is square to the side so when i set this down and i put that edge on that gauge line i know this side is going to be parallel to that line the last thing i want is to have that twisted at all and then instead of having a nice rectangular shaped mortise i end up with areas where the mortise chisel has stuck out like this don't want that to happen one side of this we're going to see so i need to have it in a position so that i can see plumb if i try to do it this way i have no way of being able to tell plum if i turn it this way i can see plum and we woodworkers are pretty good at guessing things like that or i should say estimating when things are standing plum or level now i'm going to avoid this line and this line which are the outside edges until the very last that's going to allow me to pry to remove some of this material without worrying about going out beyond this i only need to go halfway deep i'm going to go halfway from each side there's no way that you're going to get a nice clean mortise if you try to chop from one side all the way through far better to chop halfway from this side and meet it in the middle so i'm going to set that on there i'm going to start on this first line this not this line i'm going to start on that one right there set the chisel in place now the reason why i prefer to work to one gauge line for me if i had two gauge lines on there i'm setting my chisel and it looks like i'm sitting over top of one line and not too far away from the other so rather than drive myself crazy i use one line and i work to it so i'll set that chisel so that i'm right on the gauge on the mark that i made hit it like you mean it i'm going to come back to the next one the faster i can get down there the better go to the next one and at some point you can start to push out the pieces just be careful don't grab hold of your chisel like this allow the chisel to guide itself so just have it sitting in your palm like this so as you push it it will follow hopefully follow the mortise and not twist off to one side of the other okay now at this point i don't want to risk going out beyond those lines so what i'm going to do i'll turn around and do this one is i'm going to chop straight down but i'll go down inside there a bit so i want to keep my chisel standing plumb this way as well as standing plumb in this direction i can still pry it a little bit and i'm not touching this line yet and i'll just keep climbing up this ramp this is where you want your chisel to be quite sharp you're wanting to bite into that slope of the end grain so i'm putting this right on the gauge line up against the gauge up against the marking gauge line on this side up against the pen mark on this side get it started then turn it this way so i can make sure i'm cutting down plumb in this direction and i'm expecting the mortise to hold the chisel with its thick sides so it stays plum in this direction don't want to pry against that now we'll do the same thing on this end then we'll flip it over and do the other one what i'm going to do i've taken a block of hardwood and i've milled it so the face is flat and the edge is flat and square to the face and i'm just going to set it on here and put a mark outlining where the edges of the mortise are then i'm going to strike a line i'm going to put this in position and i'm going to use my marking gauge to get this precise rather than try to guess by looking at it okay that should be right on now i'm going to clamp that in place now you notice that i'm not i've got it turned the opposite way but i'm simply going to use this as a guide to hold that chisel so again i'm going to stay away from the outside edge but i'm going to keep this tight against the face and just start tapping that down the action of the chisel the bevel will simply push the chisel forward so when you do this you have to you have to create a bit of an opening first that the successive material that is successfully cut off has a place to flow into you can't just drive the chisel to full length on the first chop so first one is shallow each one gets successfully deeper and each time it just pushes that waste into that opening and it becomes a very simple process keep that tight against your block you could have done this on the other side i just i wanted to show you the option of doing it both ways chisel right on the line line it up with the vertical line chop it through okay at this point we can take the guide block off and clean that out again you're going to find the smaller narrower chisel is a lot more convenient now you look in there you may see some stuff stuck on the side and this is where i would grab a beveled edge chisel and i'm going to work from the two outside faces in rather than try to push this all the way through and risk breaking something off out here so i'll just come into the middle and just get rid of those hangers on now i'm going to put my square in there to make sure that these ends there's no bump and i see that i'm not lining up perfectly so i've got a little bit of debris to get rid of on that one i'm referencing from the outside face so that's touching but it's not touching out here so i've got a little more material to remove off of there so we'll do these one at a time and i can see where there's a bump right there so i'll go back to my half inch chisel and i'm going to pair this one i find it best i'll just check make sure that that's sharp enough it is so what i'm going to do is i'm going to get that just below the surface and i'm going to use my left thumb to push the chisel in this direction so it'll help it bite into that end grain obviously it's going to want to follow the path of least resistance and fall off but you've got to keep it engaged i'm gonna turn this around and go like this okay that's nice and tight and that one's tight below but just to make it a little easier to see i'm gonna use this yellow masking tape and put it right along that baseline so when i'm sawing i don't end up accidentally cutting below it now i'm going to go in take my chisel and create a little wall to work up against by simply going into the waste and cutting up against that gauge line and we can just pull that piece out and it'll give the saw a place to get started you so uh huh hello now ideally we get those sides perfectly parallel to here right off the saw if we don't well we got some work to do but before i test it i'm going to go in i'm going to clean up these shoulders this happens to be the easiest way to do it with a chisel i didn't take my cut all the way i didn't want to run the risk of scarring down this face so i stopped just a little bit short again look for the look for any remnant of the gauge line engage mark and if you can see it just go ahead set your chisel on it you don't want to be starting out here in midair you come in there and just set your chisel on that little bit of a smooth spot left by the marking gauge okay now we're going to check this from both sides because we need it to fit in here but it really needs to fit out here so i'll take that and put that in there and this is where we want it to be maybe even a little bit tighter than normal because the fit is going to be how well this piece looks against that that outside perimeter of the joint so this fits okay there but it's a little bit tight there so rather than risk it don't want to damage that i'm going to come in here and if i hold that like that i can see that my cut on this cheek actually sloped out a little bit so we've got to repair that so what i'm going to do is hold this in place so that it doesn't move and we need this face to be parallel to this face i'll keep that down below now i prefer to use a screwdriver on this and i'm going to come right out here i'm going to reference off of the left side of the tool i'm going to set the cutter down so that it's just making contact now the action of the cutter is going to want to pull the tool like this the bevel's on the top side you've got to counteract that by pushing down really firmly on the opposite hand in this case my left side now if you were used if it was a little bit bigger i would actually switch and use the number 71 which is a larger router plane i've actually added a base plate to it so that you have lots of contact area to keep that nice and tight and avoid having that tip on you while you're using it i think i can do this one however this is about as far out as i'd want to be from the support of this part of the tool so i'm going to see where that's making contact and i'm just using the left corner of the cutter i'm not going whole hog meaning i'm not making the full width of the cutter do the work i'm just using that corner to shear it a little bit again less efforts required and anytime you can reduce the effort you increase the control you have and you want to be careful because you're cutting across the grain you run the risk of having it break out and you don't want to lose this because that's going to show when it protrudes through the other side or the face side of the mortise if i needed to i could come around this way and come in and as opposed to cutting across and cutting out so that's pretty good that's making contact all the way so i'm not going to touch that one again but just before i do the other one i'm going to check this okay it's still a little too snug but i know that this side is my is the appropriate width so i'm going to use that to reference my cutter i can't run the risk of them not being identical so i'll reset it okay that's what we want now we'll go from the inside and look and see what we got for a fit now i'm going to check and see if our shoulder is square that's leaning a little bit we'll turn it the other way and see what happens well that is as well well that's those are square we'll fix it with the shoulder okay we need to remove oh shoot i just knocked that i just knocked that piece off i pushed up one of those fibers that now i'm gonna have to be really careful with that i should be able to go in there and fix that we have to save this so i'm gonna piece take a piece of cellophane tape and i'll put it right over here now i'm going to clamp a block on there because i want to make sure that that piece that pushed up stays flat cellophane tape will keep the cyan acrylic from sticking to this block now i'm going to use the thin cyan acrylic to go in there and stiffen up those fibers i'm going to put a little bit of the medium nice thing about the thin is it'll wick down in and the medium will give a little more support to those broken fibers okay we'll give that a chance to dry and then we'll go in and see if we can't repair that all right we'll peel that i shot a little bit of activator on there to help set that up a little quicker now we just got to go in there and clean that up i'll work from the face side so that's not to create any more damage so okay now we're going to work on this shoulder okay so i'm looking at the gap i have over here and i need to remove the same amount of material on this side in order to fix it and then i can just join the two edges so i'm going to use my marking gauge set that at a 30 second got to be careful with that i'm going to do the same thing once you've created a spot in the middle then just use the chisel to take off small bits and the rest of the chisel references off of what you've already done which helps to keep that in line now i didn't go all the way out to either side now i switched to a narrower chisel yes and we'll do the same thing on the other side okay so i took a little more off actually i undercut it a little bit more and that ended up giving me a pretty good shoulder line so what we want to do now is go in there and plane this surface just to get rid of those marks don't want to take too much because i don't want to get down into that area where the broken fibers were just below the surface set that down now i'm just going to lightly score that now i can see that little mark and what that's going to allow me to do is to get a nice even chamfer but depending on this is where you can decide whether you want your chamfer to be long and shallow or rather rather abrupt but i'm going to come in with my marking gauge and i'm just going to put a light line on there now with my block playing i can come in and i just i'll cut down to both lines i'm going to use my chisel to start it with can't afford to go below this line because it'll show us a gap and once you get the little bevel started you kind of have to judge whether or not you're right at the right at the correct angle because you've got to get down to the tape at the same time you're meeting that line i need to have a little more bevel and if you've taken more off one side than the other then you're going to take some short strokes in this case from here to the middle until that catches up a little more chamfer is done and you've got it it's got to be right on so i had to go back in and i corrected it because these need to look square this is going to be the challenge when it comes to gluing if we put a lot of glue on the inside of here it's going to show up on the surface and then you've got to try to clean it off and that's a nightmare this surface has to be finished you can't do it after the fact so that's one of the challenges to this particular joint so choosing the lesser of two evils is this we either put glue inside the mortise which is what we normally would do and then we have to deal with the glue that comes off the excess up here or we put glue on the tenon and we're going to have it squeezing out down here well i'd rather do that than this one now we could go in and put a finish on that or at least well yes whatever finish we're going to apply carefully just put it on here so the glue doesn't stick but you still have to deal with it out there as well you could do some tape and a lot of things but what i'm going to do is just go in here and glue the sides of this there really is not a lot of clamping we can do if we had to we could pull that shoulder down in tight but i'm going gonna just leave it like that we'll let it set up come back and give our final thoughts all right so that's what you end up with which actually looks really sharp now of course to take away from this is you can never just assume and my bad for not checking that first didn't expect it to be off fixed it but we've never been able to use that if it was a piece of furniture however if you want to take the time that really dresses up and you can make a lovely decorative feature out of the joinery with a through tenon like that good luck with it if you enjoy my method of work and like my style of teaching click on any one of these videos to help take your woodworking to the next level i've always said better tools make the job so much easier if you click on the plain and chisel icon below it'll take you to our site and introduce all the tools that we actually manufacture right here in our shop it'll also give you information on our in-person and online workshops

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 49,805

Keywords: beginner woodwork, beginner woodworking joints, easy mortise and tenon joint, furniture making, hand cut mortise and tenon, hand cut tenon, hand tool woodworking, hand tools, how to, how to cut a mortise and tenon joint, How to cut a through mortise and tenon joint, how to make a through mortise and tenon joint, joinery, mortise and tenon, mortise and tenon joint, strong woodwork joints, through mortise and tenon, through mortise and tenon joint, woodworking joints

Id: gFZK3sLOtBw

Length: 39min 4sec (2344 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 09 2022