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Thread: Tenon Shoulder Question

  1. #31
    Join Date
    Apr 2015
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    New England area
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    588
    It never (or very rarely) makes an exiting cut. The cutter needs to be the sharpest in your kit, and set to take the barest amount of tissue. You should be able to tune the joint by planning in from both edges. And the cutter projection should be the same on each side - basically a whisker. If your cutter is not, remove material on a fine honing stone until it is. Use the rule from a quality combo square to check flatness of the shoulders. Check the flatness of the surface of the mortised piece in the immediate area of the joint before you do a bloody thing to the tenon's shoulders. It may be that one (or a few) very light passes on the mortised piece will resolve the fit. ALWAYS CHECK THE MORTISED WORKPIECE FIRST for flat. Your shoulders could be perfect and the issue is with the mating workpiece. You can plane the slightest of hollows over the mortise with the curved cutter in your smoothing plane set for the absolute finest shaving it can possibly take (a bowed scraper works here too). This may bring all to truth without even fooling with the tenon's shoulders.

    Why is the board's spell checker changing plan*ing to planning?
    Last edited by Charles Guest; 12-14-2018 at 11:16 AM.

  2. #32
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Location
    Missouri
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    2,151
    I have a shoulder plane, medium LN. I really hate to use it but on occasion I find it helpful. I always feel like I've screwed up when I get it out for shoulder work. To prevent spelching don't run off the end or put a back up scrap on the end. The reason I hate it is because to be effective you have to reset the plane to change directions. Plenty of extra effort. The one thing that has helped my shoulder work over the years is to remember on the front side cut to the line and on the back side take the line. I believe that most people use a shoulder plane on the checks and not shoulders. The reason for my belief is all the suggestions seem to point to large shoulder planes. When is the last time you cut a tenon with a 1 1/4" shoulders? Saw it, clean the saw fuzz off with a sharp chisel, cut the back short a bit, and hope for the best.
    Jim

  3. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by James Pallas View Post
    No crutch to it Dom. All methods can come into play. All kinds of guides have been used, miter boxes, shooting boards, paring blocks etc. Guides have been used since day 1.
    Jim
    Find me a woodworker who does not use a "crutch" (a ruler) to draw straight lines or one who uses the Pythagorean Theorem instead of a "crutch" (a square) to square up a small box, and I will show you a true woodworker who uses no crutches in his or her work.

    Simon

  4. #34
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    Aug 2012
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    Missouri
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    Quote Originally Posted by Simon MacGowen View Post
    Find me a woodworker who does not use a "crutch" (a ruler) to draw straight lines or one who uses the Pythagorean Theorem instead of a "crutch" (a square) to square up a small box, and I will show you a true woodworker who uses no crutches in his or her work.

    Simon
    Spoon carvers
    Jim

  5. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by JohnM Martin View Post
    That is exactly what I have been doing. Any tips to avoid blow out when using a shoulder plane? I have been working from both sides towards the middle which seems to work for me, but always requires 'fiddling' to get it dead flat the entire way.
    Many things can go wrong if you can't get it flat: uneven force - you apply too much downward force on the back when you start (this is a common mistake even when people use a bench plane); the blade not properly set; uneven number of strokes made; etc. Try this: pencil mark the cheek before you plane, and check the mark after each stroke. Remark as necessary to guide your planing.

    In my earlier comment, I called the shoulder plane a tool with a steep learning curve for a good reason. It is both a misunderstood and underused tool. I have seen people use a shoulder plane with overlapping strokes on the cheeks (because the plane is narrower than the cheek is wide), and that's incorrect. You even see it illustrated in that manner in a recent FW article! (Don't trust everything you see published.)

    Simon

  6. #36
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Putney, Vermont
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    This is an excellent post. It really gets into the nuances of achieving a perfect mortice and tenon joint.
    I am almost at that point of sawing the tenons in my work bench stretchers, and will use my tenon saw to attempt the almost perfect joint.
    Thanks Guys.

  7. #37
    Join Date
    Apr 2015
    Location
    New England area
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    588
    I'll just repeat for emphasis -- don't try to fit shoulders to a relatively poorly planed (or chopped) mortised workpiece. Check it first. It has to be dead flat, to one whispy shaving hollow around the mortise. If you try to fit the shoulders to a bump (it doesn't have to be big at all) near the mortise where a shoulder will touch, it'll drive you nuts and take forever. You have to know what's out -- the shoulders or the mortised workpiece. The tool doesn't necessarily have a steep learning curve (though some in this thread do seem confused about how to use one), but fitting the joint at its final stages and understanding what to do and in what order most definitely does.

    The mortise could also have been chopped at an angle creating a 'hard-side' and a profound shoulder gap that has nothing to do with the shoulders being off at all. They could be perfect and there'd still be a gap big enough to stick a No. 2 pencil lead in.

    This video will help:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhtD14Qn5pM

    Fixing the shoulders, in this instance, won't fix the bigger problem but just assures the unit will go up with twist but with closed, cosmetically perfect shoulders. That's a fail, in case you didn't know it.

    This, of course, doesn't apply to those boffins who've never chopped a mortise at anything but 90* EXACTLY to the face. Listen closely to his acknowledgement near the end of the video that chopping them off-vertical does happen, and this is a more honest assessment of real workshop conditions as opposed to posturing on a forum about joints that ALWAYS fit straight from saw and chisel with no need for adjustment ("I haven't had to adjust a mortise and tenon joint since 1974" and all that garbage). When you read something like that, run, don't walk. It's bull$hit. You need a plan to fix the joint, rather than remake one or even two workpieces with an equally likely chance of having the same issues as the ones presently on the bench. Chippendale, Seddon, Sheraton, Gimson, et al. all fixed and adjusted little and not-so-little discrepancies along the way in everything they built. Nobody cuts every joint on every project perfectly.
    Last edited by Charles Guest; 12-14-2018 at 1:20 PM.

  8. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Charles Guest View Post
    I'll just repeat for emphasis -- don't try to fit shoulders to a relatively poorly planed (or chopped) mortised workpiece. Check it first. It has to be dead flat, to one whispy shaving hollow around the mortise. If you try to fit the shoulders to a bump (it doesn't have to be big at all) near the mortise where a shoulder will touch, it'll drive you nuts and take forever. You have to know what's out -- the shoulders or the mortised workpiece. The tool doesn't necessarily have a steep learning curve (though some in this thread do seem confused about how to use one), but fitting the joint at its final stages and understanding what to do and in what order most definitely does.

    The mortise could also have been chopped at an angle creating a 'hard-side' and a profound shoulder gap that has nothing to do with the shoulders being off at all. They could be perfect and there'd still be a gap big enough to stick a No. 2 pencil lead in.

    This video will help:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhtD14Qn5pM

    Fixing the shoulders, in this instance, won't fix the bigger problem but just assures the unit will go up with twist but with closed, cosmetically perfect shoulders. That's a fail, in case you didn't know it.

    This, of course, doesn't apply to those boffins who've never chopped a mortise at anything but 90* EXACTLY to the face. Listen closely to his acknowledgement near the end of the video that chopping them off-vertical does happen, and this is a more honest assessment of real workshop conditions as opposed to posturing on a forum about joints that ALWAYS fit straight from saw and chisel with no need for adjustment ("I haven't had to adjust a mortise and tenon joint since 1974" and all that garbage). When you read something like that, run, don't walk. It's bull$hit. You need a plan to fix the joint, rather than remake one or even two workpieces with an equally likely chance of having the same issues as the ones presently on the bench. Chippendale, Seddon, Sheraton, Gimson, et al. all fixed and adjusted little and not-so-little discrepancies along the way in everything they built. Nobody cuts every joint on every project perfectly.
    This is a great point. I think I've often focused on fixing the tenons to get a cosmetically pleasing "tight" fit just assuming the mortise piece to be flat. Good advice.

  9. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by JohnM Martin View Post
    This is a great point. I think I've often focused on fixing the tenons to get a cosmetically pleasing "tight" fit just assuming the mortise piece to be flat. Good advice.
    To check the mortise (narrow) walls for squareness and flatness, this kind of narrow square is helpful: http://www.starrett.com/metrology/pr...ring-Tools/14D

    Some people make something similar with a block, or buy such a square from Lee Valley or Sterling.

    Simon

  10. #40
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Location
    Missouri
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    A couple of things you probably already have in your shop to help with M&T tasks. Blue tape or masking tape extended past the mortise with a pencil line to give you a gun sight for square. A 12" rule inside the mortise to check for plumb. The slide on a folding rule to check depth, easy just extend the slide and push down don't have to look until you get it to eye level. If you really want to scare yourself, put a compass behind the steel rule to see how good you are. Hope some find this helpful.
    Jim
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  11. #41
    Or a woodworker who never finishes any projects

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