Trimming Tenon Cheeks

[Warren Mickley]

I'm working on a Stickley #603 Taboret with through mortise and tenon joints on the legs. While my marking seemed to be laser accurate, I wound up with mortises about 0.010" undersized and tenons about 0.020" oversize. After truing up the mortises to assure they were straight and square I went to work on the tenon cheeks. I managed to get them serviceable with a combination of block and shoulder planes. I'm thinking the process would have been simplified with a Rabbet Block plane. Any Creekers use a Rabbet Block for this purpose?

One of the things that really stuck out to me was that the mortises were "undersized". Usually the mortises are the width of the mortise chisel and the mortise gauge is set to the chisel width. So the mortises are the standard.

The tenon cheeks are sawed right on the line, as described by Peter Nicholson. On historic work, you can still see the sawing marks on the tenon. If the sawing is off and the tenon is too fat, you can usually see the line and work to the line. Chisel or rabbet plane are the traditional remedies.

[Rob Luter]

The mortises were marked and the majority of the waste removed with a Forstner bit on the drill press. I pared them to size afterward by working to the knife line. I don't have a 1/2" mortise chisel.

[michael langman]

If you lay a coup;e of pieces of paper down on your bench, then lay your router plane on top of that and loosen the clamp to your cutter so the cutter drops down onto the benchtop, then tighten the clampyou should have about a .005 depth of cut adjustment. Us one piece of paper if need be.
I have found this to work better then fiddling with the adjistment screw for fine cuts.

[Warren Mickley]

The mortises were marked and the majority of the waste removed with a Forstner bit on the drill press. I pared them to size afterward by working to the knife line. I don't have a 1/2" mortise chisel.

Yes that is fine, but the standard is then the gauge lines, which show up on both the piece to be mortised and the piece to be sawn. You don't want your accuracy tied to a series of ruler measurements.

[Jim Koepke]

The more I ponder this and the comments above the more I think improving my router plane skills is probably the better approach.

When using my router on tenons one side is held solid, like a compass point, on the workpiece and the other handle is swung in an arc. When one arc is done, the stationary router handle is moved to the center of the next arc.

Harry Strasil Jr. posted about his shop made router for tenon trimming > https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?36807

His images were stored off of SMC so sadly they have a PhotoBucket logo across the face of them.

More links on routing tenon cheeks:

https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?122794

https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?73635

jtk

[lowell holmes]

It occurred to me that a wood rasp would be useful for such a task. You could remove stock with a rasp and finish it with a chisel.

[Jerry Olexa]

I've had good results w a router plane and in some cases, a shoulder plane.....A M/T joint is a fav of mine.

[John Stevens]

Gentlemen, thank you both so very much for these ideas.

An easy way to work with this is drawing lines on the adjuster nut

If you lay a coup;e of pieces of paper down on your bench, then lay your router plane on top of that and loosen the clamp to your cutter so the cutter drops down onto the benchtop, then tighten the clampyou should have about a .005 depth of cut adjustment. Us one piece of paper if need be.
I have found this to work better then fiddling with the adjistment screw for fine cuts.

[Rob Luter]

I got back in the shop today after a couple weeks away. I spent some quality time with my router plane and a freshly honed cutter. The results were excellent. I just need to slow down a bit.