Have you built and used Matthias Wandel's tenoning jig?

[Gene Davis]

He shows it off here in this YouTube video. http://tinyurl.com/brx95z3

Looks pretty fabulous. I was wondering how one would buy the small amount of MDO plywood to use in making this.

[Gordon Eyre]

Looks like it makes for a quick and accurate setup.

[Gene Davis]

$11 bucks done with a quick PayPal click, and you've got the plans. Amazon sells small sheets of Baltic birch plywood in the thicknesses necessary. There are inexpensive dial gages available. Looks like a quick build.

[Bruce Page]

Gene, thanks for posting this, I just ordered the plans.

[Andrew Hughes]

very cool jig someday when I get cab saw I would like try my hand and make one.I think cutting the shoulders first is safer did you see the little pieces stacking up. And getting ready to launch at the operator?

[Alan Schaffter]

I really like the way that both cheeks can be cut with one clamping setup. I wish Mathias would take it one or two steps farther.

It would be even better if the blade kerf could be measured and set via direct transfer rather than by using calipers. Since the mortise determines all tenon dimensions and settings, it would also be nice if the thickness and position the tenon (centered or off-set), could be set by direct transfer using the mortise as a guide, instead of needing calipers and a dial gauge.

I can visualize it but haven't taken the time to attempt to design it. With the new design you would locate and cut the desired mortise using a mortiser, plunge router, or his pantorouter, then place the mortise over a set of locating pins which transfer the tenon size and position (relative to the preferred face) to the jig stops. It may be possible to build, but too complex to achieve the required level of precision and durability.

[Gene Davis]

Matthias has many dozens of videos up on YouTube, and some of them are showing him using his horizontal slot mortiser. In one video, he focuses on ideal mortise and tenon fit-up, and I believe it is in that one where he talks about the accuracy of his mortising setup and how he uses his knowledge of "fast feed" and "slow feed" to his advantage. I'm pretty sure he sells the plans for the slot mortiser, which would be another jig/machine to have for doing furniture work. It uses a router body with enough power to drive a 1/2" plunge bit.

[fRED mCnEILL]

For cutting tenons I made my jig to cut BOTH cuts at the same time by taking two 10 " blades and machining an EXACT spacer to go between them. Workds like a charm.

[Tim Janssen]

For cutting tenons I made my jig to cut BOTH cuts at the same time by taking two 10 " blades and machining an EXACT spacer to go between them. Workds like a charm.

That's clever! Different thickness spacers could then give you different thickness tenons.
Has blade wobble ever been a concern for you?

Tim

[Alan Schaffter]

For cutting tenons I made my jig to cut BOTH cuts at the same time by taking two 10 " blades and machining an EXACT spacer to go between them. Workds like a charm.

How do you cut your mortises that guarantees the tenon will match? Same question for matching the faces of the tenon board with the mortised board, and what do you do when you want to change the size of the M&T?

[Gene Davis]

Matthias discusses this in his video about what size tenon for what size mortise. In thousandths of inches.

He is an engineer, and his approach to woodworking is from that of a machine-design person. Repeatability, tolerance, drift, wobble, and runout are all considered in his machine designs and in his operation.

[Harvey Melvin Richards]

For cutting tenons I made my jig to cut BOTH cuts at the same time by taking two 10 " blades and machining an EXACT spacer to go between them. Workds like a charm.
I do the same thing. It makes for a mostly brainless tenon.

[Alan Schaffter]

Matthias discusses this in his video about what size tenon for what size mortise. In thousandths of inches.

He is an engineer, and his approach to woodworking is from that of a machine-design person. Repeatability, tolerance, drift, wobble, and runout are all considered in his machine designs and in his operation.

I agree about Mathias' approach, but I don't see that it is easy and quick to set up any of his machines. Calipers and VERY careful setup are required for most if not all. Once that is done, however, they become a snap to use.

But back to the other issue I raised- while it may be relatively easy to set a tenoning jig to cut a well-fitting tenon, the placement of that tenon, relative to its faces, may not match the location of the mortise. If the tenon or the thickness of the stock are off the slightest then the joint may not align. That is one reason many cabinet makers start with thicker (13/16") stock when they make cabinet doors- so they can use a wide-belt sander to mill the assembled door to 3/4" and remove any offset created by mis-matched mortise and tenon.

There are a lot of things going on with a M&T- usually the mortise is cut first- but it must be accurately located- either centered on the stock or offset if called for in the design. If a mortise is cut with a router it is pretty much ready to go, but those cut by hand or even with a hollow-chisel mortiser usually need to have the walls cleaned up with a chisel and that can result in a wider mortise or one that is no longer in the correct position. As far as a matching tenon- it must be the same thickness as the mortise- two cheeks cut accurately, and just as important, it must be correctly positioned (centered or offset) to match the position of the mortise. If any of those cuts are off, the tenon will not fit properly, and/or once assembled the faces of the stock will be misaligned. It doesn't take much misalignment to be easily detectable by eye or by touch.

[Alan Bienlein]

I agree about Mathias' approach, but I don't see that it is easy and quick to set up any of his machines. Calipers and VERY careful setup are required for most if not all. Once that is done, however, they become a snap to use.

But back to the other issue I raised- while it may be relatively easy to set a tenoning jig to cut a well-fitting tenon, the placement of that tenon, relative to its faces, may not match the location of the mortise. If the tenon or the thickness of the stock are off the slightest then the joint may not align. That is one reason many cabinet makers start with thicker (13/16") stock when they make cabinet doors- so they can use a wide-belt sander to mill the assembled door to 3/4" and remove any offset created by mis-matched mortise and tenon.

There are a lot of things going on with a M&T- usually the mortise is cut first- but it must be accurately located- either centered on the stock or offset if called for in the design. If a mortise is cut with a router it is pretty much ready to go, but those cut by hand or even with a hollow-chisel mortiser usually need to have the walls cleaned up with a chisel and that can result in a wider mortise or one that is no longer in the correct position. As far as a matching tenon- it must be the same thickness as the mortise- two cheeks cut accurately, and just as important, it must be correctly positioned (centered or offset) to match the position of the mortise. If any of those cuts are off, the tenon will not fit properly, and/or once assembled the faces of the stock will be misaligned. It doesn't take much misalignment to be easily detectable by eye or by touch.

You all are putting too much thought into this simple jig.

I would think you would use the same blade for making the tenons which would negate the fact of always having to measure how thick the blade is. In the video he already tells you how wide thick the blade he's using is (.100).

Once you know that the rest is easy. You always cut the mortises first so you will know all the measurements you need to know to set the jig and in the video he was withing about .001 or .002. I think that's pretty close!

And if it's off a hair and needs to be flush then plane it or sand it flush.

As for why we use 13/16" material to make doors in cabinet shops its not so we can sand the stiles and rails flush because of mismatch. It's because it leaves us material to get rid of the blemishes and defects from the material because of all the handling it gets in the process from delivery to the shop to final assembly of the door. We only sand our doors enough to remove the blemishes and thats from the typical .812" (13/16) that the material measures when we get it to a final dimension of about .790" ( just over 25/32").

[Alan Schaffter]

You all are putting too much thought into this simple jig.

I would think you would use the same blade for making the tenons which would negate the fact of always having to measure how thick the blade is. In the video he already tells you how wide thick the blade he's using is (.100).

Well if you have a well equipped shop or are into production work that sounds all fine and good. But if you read enough hobby woodworker forums you'll see that for many it is not as easy as it sounds- what if his 1/8" (.125") WW-II is off being sharpened and a thin kerf (3/32") (.09375") Freud is the back-up, and oh, no stiffeners and maybe the blade is a bit warped. Also, no one has yet explained how his jig positions the tenon L-R quickly and easily, especially if it is to be off-set.

The point being, Mathias is very meticulous and uses calipers with every setup and most everything he does. That contributes a lot to the success of his jig.

[Alan Bienlein]

. Also, no one has yet explained how his jig positions the tenon L-R quickly and easily, especially if it is to be off-set.

You did watch the video didn't you as he does explain how he positions the tenon and if you notice the tenon he cut is offset.

As far as the blades go I wouldn't just rely on the physical measurement of the blade but would do a test cut to see if the width of the kerf matched what the blade measured.

[Alan Schaffter]

You did watch the video didn't you as he does explain how he positions the tenon and if you notice the tenon he cut is offset.

As far as the blades go I wouldn't just rely on the physical measurement of the blade but would do a test cut to see if the width of the kerf matched what the blade measured.

After he registered the jig to the blade he used the dial indicator to set an "arbitrary" tenon offset (from one face) of .25" but it is NOT centered, and if you look closely, his mortise is centered! :eek: I can't tell if the mortise stock and tenon stock were different thicknesses. In any case, the user must carefully measure the mortise offset then carefully set the jig to cut the same tenon offset whether centered or not. Also, there is no automatic centering which is possible on any mortiser using a double pass with opposite faces against the fence.

As Mathias found out his "3/8 inch" wide mortise was too narrow, too. Not sure where that came from since he used a router-based mortiser (his older design or newer Pantorouter?).

Again, all I am saying, as I said above, it would be nice to be able to set the tenoning jig using the direct transfer of the blade kerf and mortise position and thickness. Then you wouldn't need calipers and it would require less fiddling. I think all of those are achievable.

[Wayne Jolly]

It looks like a pretty kool little jig, but: How do you make sure the tenon is centered?? Even looking at the sample he cuts at the end of his video you can see that is is far from center.

Wayne

[Alan Bienlein]

Ok lets see if I can answer these for you all so it makes sense.

His machines/ jigs are basically designed to reference off of one face only. By referencing from the face side of a door or face frame or a table leg or apron you take the variances of different thicknesses of the stock out of the equation. There's nothing written in stone that I'm aware of that's says a mortise and tenon must be centered.

It doesn't matter if the mortise isn't centered as long as he knows the distance from the face of the board he referenced from to the edge of the mortise. Then its a simple matter of setting the tenon jig to either be the same dimension or less if you want the piece your cutting the tenon on flush or offset from the reference face.

We regularly use calipers at work to check the thickness of the stock to setup machines such as the cnc, edgebander, wide belt sander and the machine that routes the profiles on the edges of the doors.

As for his mortise being less than 3/8" all that needed to happen was for the bit to be sharpened once. We deal with it all the time at work on the cnc and that's the purpose of the calipers is to check the width of the dado's once you put a sharpened bit in the tooling and have to change the offset to compensate for the reduced diameter of the bit due to sharpening.

[Gene Davis]

There is another of his videos some of you might like to see. One in which he uses his pantorouter machine to cut a mortise and tenon, using a couple softwood blanks milled from ordinary framing lumber. Like a 2x4 into a 2x4.

Watch him deal with the slight oversize of the tenon, then listen, yes, listen, to the way the trial fit and un-fit sounds when he tunes the machine's setup to arrive at the perfect fit. Priceless.

See it here: http://youtu.be/Apovqke6KYQ

I have a hollow chisel mortiser, so I am not quite so tempted to do a build of his horizontal mortise mill, or his pantorouter machine, but that tenoning jig, yeah, I think I'll do one.

[Floyd Mah]

As the good witch said to Dorothy, you already have the ability to get to back to Kansas. It's on your feet. Well, it's actually in your pile of tenon jigs for your table saw. From what I've seen, most of the tenon jigs are constructed along the same lines as the Delta jig. I posted an article a while back here (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?116158-Modify-your-Delta-Tenoning-jig&highlight=) that shows how you can convert your existing Delta-like jig to work like Matthias' jig with just addition of another adjusting screw and a lever to shift the reference plate. Construction effort is very low. I used it to make about 19 windows and the associated tenons (about 18) tenons per window (they had eight panes per window). Take a look. No need to reinvent the car just to get custom rims.

[Alan Bienlein]

Well to answer the op's question yes I have just built Matthias Wandel's Quick set tenon jig. The plans are excellent and I had no problem assembling the jig. I even did a couple of test cuts just like he did and they came out about .002" under what I had set. I'd say that's pretty accurate for not even double checking the blade with a set of calipers and just taking for granted that it cut a 1/8" kerf.

Total cost was $15 for parts and $6 for the plans. Sure beats $80 plus for the delta jig! I got all the parts I needed at the local borg.
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[Roger Feeley]

I've been cutting both sides of a tenon for a long time but not in one setup. What I did was find a spacer the exact width of my saw blade kerf. I used a drill bit that I keep with my tenoning jig. If you add that spacer to the width of your mortising bit, you have the distance you must move the saw blade to move from one cheek to the other. Now, there is a gross adjustment on my Delta tenoning jig. It's a sleeve that goes into the cast iron base. You can loosen a knob and slide the jig back and forth. That sleeve has a shoulder on it. So you slide that sleeve all the way in and use the threaded adjustment to make your first cheek cut. Then, you slide the sleeve out and put your spacer and whatever mortising bit you want to use in there and snug up the sleeve. Cut your other cheek and you are done.

The advantage of this method is that once you have your spacer, you get a tight tenon every time. It doesn't matter what size mortise you are using as long as you use the mortising bit.

The disadvantage is that it would be very difficult to put your tenon in the exact center. That's never been a problem for me.

Of course, if you are hand cutting your mortises, you would want a different sort of spacer.