Mortise and Tenon

[Matt Brawley]

Well, I made the leap today. I am building a coffee table and end table set and decided to do mortise and tenon joinery for them. Instead of grabbing my router and table saw, I grabbed a couple of chisels, a mallet, and a backsaw and started on the 8 joints for the coffee table. After an hour I had my first one done and felt a much bigger sense of accomplishment than if I had fired up the router and made the mortises. Of course at this rate I will be done with this set sometime next year.

[Jim Koepke]

Of course at this rate I will be done with this set sometime next year.

The first one is the slowest. After a while, you will be knocking them out in no time.

jim

[harry strasil]

Congratulations! Its a big step from burning electrons back thru history to actually using skill to accomplish something, the first one takes awhile for sure, but as your skill improves they get easier and faster and when you are done people will actually boast about your skill to others. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to actually do something that you programed a machine to do before. The more you actually use your new skill, the more you will appreciate your new association with a material that has fascinated Queens, Kings and people of all walks of life since the beginning of time.

Welcome to the slippery slope of personal pride and what can be accomplished by your own skill and ingenuity.

[Jacob Mac]

I am learning handcut DTs right now, but M&T are next on my list. Conratulations, and I hope to see the finished product.

[Matt Brawley]

Here are the first two joints on my coffee table. The fit came out pretty good.

[Wilbur Pan]

I have to say that I'm quite impressed. Doing a hand cut M/T joint takes some skill, but if you are using a curved board for one of the pieces, that just kicks up the level of difficulty. Nice job!

One thing that I picked up in making M/T joints is to drill a hole towards one end of the mortise. This is a quick and easy way of giving the waste someplace to go as you are chopping, which will speed things up quite a bit. The hole doesn't have to be exactly the width of the mortise or perfectly centered.

[Matt Brawley]

I will make one more observation. I never got any quicker cutting mortises, but the tenon cutting got much faster and that included cutting my left thumb and middle finger when the saw hopped out of the kerf. On the brightside I did find out that the backsaw is nice and sharp.

[Ben Davis]

I will make one more observation. I never got any quicker cutting mortises, but the tenon cutting got much faster and that included cutting my left thumb and middle finger when the saw hopped out of the kerf. On the brightside I did find out that the backsaw is nice and sharp.
Speaking of which, you'll eventually want a new saw if the real neander in you begins to stir. I am in no way saying that your current set up is inadequate. A craftsman never blames his tools. You will, however, be able to achieve quality results in much less time.

[Matt Brawley]

I agree completely that I need to improve my hand tools, but I was always a corded worker and had spent the bulk of my tool budget there. On a whim I had decided to do these by hand, and quite enjoyed it so when my tool budget gets built back up I might be looking into a LN or LV.