Morris Chair per American Furniture Design plan - tenons in legs crash

[Gene Davis]

I've got the wood, the tools, machinery, plans, and have watched the Greg Paolini video series a couple times. Just about to start.

In this plan, the tenons into legs of the front and rear stretchers interfere with those of the lower side rails. The plans and instructions say nothing about a solution. In the video, it is clear that Greg Paolini offset the stretcher to place them outboard, that is, off center and towards the outside.

This placement makes the interference less, but it is still there. In the video, he shows making a relief cut on the larger (longer) tenon of the side rails to solve this.

This is not a through-tenon design.

If you have built this design, how much was your offset?

[Terry Beadle]

On the Morris chair I made, I adjusted the width of the side tenon that is seated in the chair leg. The back side tenon is a thru tenon so it was not adjusted. I took a 1/2 inch off the side stretcher. The front stretcher tenon was below the front thru tenon so it didn't need to be adjusted.

Please look at the commented pictures below.

IMHO if you want the stretcher's on the same plane then if the tenons are both buried in the chair leg and not one of them thru like mine, then I would make the tips of the two joining tenons cut at a 45 so that they would mate like a picture frame miter.
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[Gene Davis]

Thanks, Terry. The design that you built to solves this by offsetting stretchers and rails. The American Furniture Design plan I'm building has them crashing, because the side rails are higher.

I'll solve it by moving front and rear stretchers from coming into legs at center, and move the stretcher centerlines 1/4" outboard. The tenons for each will be relieved with cuts to negate the interference, and to compensate for the loss in glue area, I will do face screws through, sort of what you did, and dress the screw counterbores with wenge plugs cut proud and chamfered.

[Ben Hatcher]

I wouldn't even bother with through tennons. They're not worth the hassle to me. I'd do stub tennons with caps and never give it a second thought.

[Terry Beadle]

You might consider draw bored doweling instead of screws. The joints are very strong and have no movement in the chair I built. I'm no lite weight either and the chair after 3 yrs of use is rock solid.

[Rob Parsons]

The solution is to preserve as much of each tenon as possible by mitering the end of each tenon.

Then peg the joint with a dowel. Here are a few pictures of my chair from a slightly different plan.


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In this chair the stretchers and rails are centered in the legs.

[Rob Parsons]

Here is another example of the same technique. This picture is from Popular Woodworking magazine editors blog.

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