Been making a lot of m&t's lately and today while I was working several questions / comments occurred to me. First, how anal are you in making the tenons exactly fit the mortise? Not talking about the fit in width, but more in terms of length. I've been trying to be as precise as possible with the layout but at times during assembly I regret it and need to take a skosh off one end or the other to line things up. Usually my m&t's look like this:
20200808_135611.jpg a tight fit all the way round. Do you leave wiggle room or try for the snug fit in length as well? See advantages in one way or the other?
I always pare the shoulders down to the tenons. Do you? Is this normal or do you consider it excessive? And if you do pare, do you use a chisel? Or..........
20200808_143202.jpg
I've always used a shoulder plane to fiddle the tenons to fit, and to adjust the shoulders if needed. But I started looking at skewed block planes, searched high and low for one and finally got it. Tried it out today and what a difference. Now I know why they are called shoulder planes instead of tenon planes. Since I started as a framer 50 years ago, and moved to roofs, stairs, trim and and the shop , my left hand has always been a clamp, or material feeder, etc. And that made me wonder why there are so many right hand skew planes, and so few left hand ones. I got a left hand one because I can throw the piece on the bench hook, left hand = clamp, and the left skew plane, used in the right hand, pulls the plane up to the shoulder of the tenon. I can't imagine trying to use a right hand skew in the same fashion. I know they sell in pairs, and that there are specialty situations where both are needed. But if you're right handed how do you use a right hand skew? The work must be clamped some how, yes?
I've also got into the habit - which I think I need to break - of custom fitting tenons to mortises, and labeling them. Not for back slats and such, but for legs and stretchers. Back again to that tight all the way round thing.
Last comment: I'm working on 2 morris chairs and I gotta say the billiard chairs I made last year were a lot tougher than this. Of course I haven't tried bending the arms yet, so we'll see.